Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 8/2/23

I'm Teresa Mosqueda.

I'm the chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

We will get the meeting started with roll call.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold.

I don't think your mic is on.

Council Member Herbold.

I can hear her well but I don't see Councilmember Herbold will announce her when she arrives.

Councilmember Peterson?

Present.

Councilmember Nelson?

Present.

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Madam Chair, that is four present and one absent.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, thank you all again for joining in.

As we see other council members join, we'll make sure to welcome them to the dais.

Oh, hello, council colleagues.

I see three of you out there.

So thanks so much for being there in person.

We continue to have these hybrid meetings to encourage strong public health adherence.

I don't know about you all, but there is some summer bugs going around.

So please do stay home if you are feeling under the weather.

as we continue to want to practice good public health protocols, regardless of whether or not it's COVID.

With that, I want to welcome our Public Safety Chair and long-time public health advocate, Council Member Herbold, is here with us as well.

Good morning, Council Member Herbold.

Well, we have a full attendance then here today.

We do have a number of items on the agenda.

I did send around a quick meeting or note this morning, indicating that we have 3 items.

I do believe that we're going to be able to go through them all in order and still have plenty of time for discussion on item number 3. the 1st item is a briefing discussion and hearing on the human services department 2023 annual action plan ordinance.

regarding housing and urban development funding.

The second item is a briefing discussion on the fiscal note enhancement and budget transparency discussion that we teed up at the last meeting.

I'm really excited about showcasing some of the great work that Tom Mikesell and Ali Panucci have done on central staff.

This is just a briefing and discussion for future work to come on this concept.

And then finally, the bigger item on our agenda, which will probably take the last hour of our meeting includes a briefing discussion and possible vote for the 2023 mid year supplemental grant acceptance ordinance.

We will have an opportunity to walk through all of the amendments here from the sponsors and vote ideally today on those amendments.

My goal is to get us out in time if there's no objection today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection today's agenda is adopted.

Let's go ahead and move on into public comment for our presenters.

Thank you so much for waiting.

We do have 11 people signed up for public comment 6 remote and 5 in person as I understand from the clerk.

So we're going to start with the.

3 on, um.

Three online and then we'll go to three in person and we'll alternate that way.

Everybody will have two minutes to provide your comments.

If you haven't dialed in before, do listen for your line to say you have been unmuted.

That's your indication that you need to hit star six to unmute both in person and remote public speakers.

You'll hear a chime when you have 10 seconds to wrap up your public comment.

We encourage you to wrap it up so that your microphone does not get eliminated.

Okay, let's go ahead and start with the folks online, and we'll have Jess Wallisch followed by Peter Hasegawa, and then BJ last, and then we'll go to the folks in the room.

Good morning, Jess.

Thanks for joining us.

Good morning, Council Members and staff.

My name is Jess Wallisch, and I'm calling on behalf of 3 Zippy Seattle.

I'd like to address item number three, the New Year Supplemental Budget, and a specific budget proviso in support of the Living Hotels Policy.

While Seattle is known for being a green city, our tourism industry is anything but.

Hotels are among the top polluting buildings in Seattle, and tourism overall is responsible for nearly a tenth of global climate pollution.

That's why 350 Seattle supports the Living Hotels Policy.

We believe that requiring new local hotels to be built with the highest environmental and social justice standards is a win for our communities and our climate.

As a result, new hotels would reduce reliance on fossil fuels, generate as much of their own energy as possible on site, conserve water, use sustainable materials, and reduce carbon impact of construction, as well as encouraging low-impact forms of transportation and considering equity for our communities.

Building hotels policy is championed by a coalition of environmental organizations and labor unions.

We are looking forward to the work based on this budget proviso and are taking another important step towards Seattle's Green New Deal with this important policy.

Please include in the mid-year supplemental budget review.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Peter Hasegawa, followed by BJ Last.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Peter Hasegawa, and I'm a co-chair of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

here today to speak on behalf of the board regarding the same budget proviso in support of the Living Hotels Ordinance.

In the last decade, the city of Seattle has set ambitious climate goals, targeting net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and aggressive carbon reduction by 2030. Unfortunately, we are simply not on track to meet these goals.

We must enact policies immediately to have a realistic chance to meet our targets especially in the categories of transportation and building.

A living hotels ordinance is a critical policy piece for Seattle to ensure hotels do their fair share in meeting our climate goals.

Thank you for hearing my testimony.

Excellent.

Thank you, Peter.

And BJ Last, and then we'll go to the folks in the room.

Good morning, BJ.

Good morning.

My name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident.

I support the solidarity budget's priorities for the mid-year supplemental budget.

Council should be funding living hotels by approving Councilmember Mosqueda's amendment regarding them.

As the prior speaker noted, Seattle has never come close to hitting its emissions targets in the decades that the city has set them.

And it's also already noted hotels account for a significant amount of emissions, both in Seattle and worldwide.

Seattle should be working to set robust environmental building standards and ensure that they are actually met.

instead of continuing to allow hotels to greenwash by making unsubstantiated claims about their environmental impact.

Council should also improve Council Member Peterson's amendment, redirecting funding from another streetcar study to Vision Zero investments, especially since that amendment calls out investments in District Two, which sees a disproportionately high amount of pedestrian deaths.

And I'm also disappointed Council is abdicating is fiscal responsibilities.

Council should abrogate the unfilled civilian positions that SPD is planning to hold vacant for the biennium in order to fund these six new positions.

Abrogating unneeded vacant positions isn't like radical, it's literally just basic budgeting practice that ensures departments aren't inflating their budgets by stockpiling unneeded positions.

Not abrogating these while adding six new positions isn't budget neutral in any way, shape, or form.

Instead, it actually increases SPD's budget by over $800,000 in the next biennium.

Additionally, Council should not allow SPD to keep its salary savings.

Doing so rewards SPD for using staffing plans to eliminate Council's oversight of its spending.

Every year, SPD submits realistically high staffing plans, that which it never comes near fulfilling, and then redirects those funding to technology projects So, thank you.

Yield my time.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

We'll come back to the last three speakers remotely in just a minute.

I understand that there are speakers in the room.

Farideh, could you please, Madam Clerk, could you please call the first three speakers up to the microphone and we will go in person.

First, we have Jim Margaard, then we have Tom Marra, and the third person is Kat Ogden.

Wonderful thanks so much.

If folks want to line up alternating at the microphones we'll turn it over to you.

Thank you and good morning council members.

Can you hear me?

My commentary is on the streetcar connector feasibility study funding and council member Peterson's amendment proposal.

Very simply put the connector streetcar would be unacceptably dangerous to the safety of our citizens.

Unacceptably dangerous.

On the morning of March 2nd, 2017, on the first hill line, a streetcar suffered a electromechanical failure, which caused it to veer and plunge out of control.

In effect, a runaway train moving down Broadway.

Very fortunately, it was at six in the morning.

Nobody was out.

It was a gradual slope.

And it was only two and a half blocks before it hit a curve.

It was derailed at that point.

The entire line came off for 18 days.

Now this was in the same general area where a woman died in the prior year from her bicycle getting stuck.

Now imagine that on First Avenue.

First of all, we're looking at 90,000-pound streetcars, 70 feet long, a much steeper slope, over five blocks instead of two blocks, the most dense pedestrian area in the city, a narrower street.

So let's say the car, we had the same exact thing happen, electromechanical failure.

Up toward the market or thereabouts, It careens, gaining rapid speed, going down First Avenue southward bound.

If it doesn't hit a car at one of the busy intersections, it will inevitably derail at Marion Street at the turn that will fly into...

Wow, two minutes goes fast.

It's a real safety issue.

That's your primary one responsibility in the city.

Thank you so much.

And yes, please do send the rest of your comments into us.

You can send those to everybody at the same time at council at seattle.gov.

So thanks for coming today.

Let's go to the next person, Madam Clerk.

Good morning, everybody.

Good to see you all.

here.

My name is Tom Marr, Executive Director of CIFF, Seattle International Film Festival.

Thank you to Councilmember Lewis for sponsoring the amendment this morning which would allocate $950,000 toward the future of Cinerama and also downtown's vibrancy.

This funding will allow us to achieve two major goals.

Number one, enables us to execute the plan to reopen the Cinerama and preserve her.

Number two, it also enables us to champion our city in several ways through a public benefit agreement, which would do three things, provide civic leadership in championing the DAP, the Downtown Activation Plan, and its seven goals.

For example, the funds would enable CIFF to create a new position, a Civic Engagement Coordinator, to build partnerships with downtown businesses such as restaurants and bars and hotels.

all to spur downtown visits, return to work efforts, and also increase safety.

Number two, provide new jobs in workforce development in the film ecosystem.

For example, a super internship program, which would be in partnership with the Seattle Film Commission, with thanks to you, Sarah Nelson, council member, for its formation.

which would give the intern career path experiences at CIFF and at the same time, along with experiences at our film industry businesses, such as production houses, film producers, and movie studios.

The funds would also help us establish paid apprenticeships in cinema projection in a host of new jobs.

And thirdly, access to the arts.

provide weekly, cost-free access to students and schools, and also social agencies and their clients.

In sum, the funding enables us to provide, open and bring the Cinerama back into our lives, to create workforce development programs and new jobs, and C, provide enriching access to our students, our schools, and our social agencies.

And on behalf of a very excited SIF community, thank you for your consideration this morning.

Thank you so much and let's go to the next person.

Up next we have Kat Ogden.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Kat Ogden, and I'm a member of the Seattle Film Commission.

I sit in position number seven, representing film production crew, which is film production crew, including but not limited to props, sets, wardrobe, makeup, hair, camera grip, and electric.

Sets can have quite a few people.

I'm here to speak in support of the vote to fund the Cinerama.

I'm coming to you exhausted after a 14-hour day and a long documentary shoot that spanned from late June to this week.

And this project is helmed by a Seattle-based filmmaker and director, led by a Seattle-based production company, and staffed by a Seattle-based crew that was predominantly female and female-identifying.

Many of the filmmakers are people that I met through CIFF and through CIFF events, including at the Cinerama.

And one of the first outings we planned after wrap was an outing to see a film together.

One of the ways we power through long days on set, especially on a grassroots homegrown project such as the one I just completed, is by imagining the moment we get to see the finished project in the theater.

This takes the daily tasks that we are called to do, which are often emotionally and physically exhausting, and places them in a larger context.

We make film to tell stories.

We use stories to build community.

We build community to bring us together, and that includes, among other things, commerce.

A healthy city, in my opinion, has a healthy film community with venues that are unique and intrinsically identifiable as landmarks.

The Cinerama is such a place.

The revitalization of the Cinerama is an important contribution to the landscape of the creative economy in Seattle.

It supports the Film Super Internship, which, as Tom mentioned, would be in partnership with the Seattle Film Commission.

It engages community and community-based groups, such as Belltown Community Groups, filmgoers, filmmaker organizations such as NIFTY, the 8-Hour Film Festival, And it also supports the diversification of the venue doing different things, and it identifies Seattle as a premier film destination.

Film is a unique art form.

We live both in living rooms and people's homes and in community gathering places, such as the Cinerama.

And the theater and CIF are not for us just a place to see films, but a place to gather as a community, to network, to build our future projects, and to bring work to the people that live here who practice the art of filmmaking.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Is that three?

Shall we shift back?

And I said sift.

Shall we go back to the online, folks?

Yeah, we have three more online.

OK, great.

We'll come back to the others in the room in just a minute.

Stefan Moritz, followed by Bob Messina and Irene Wall.

Good morning, Stefan.

Good morning, council members.

I am Stefan Moritz with Unite Your Local Aid, the Hospitality Workers Union.

I'm speaking in support of the Living Hotels budget proviso.

I think this, developing this policy is an opportunity for Seattle to lead on climate and to meet its own goals.

I know others have talked about the impact of tourism and the hotel industry on the environment, so I'm going to skip that.

What I want to emphasize is that Working on this policy is also an opportunity to give travelers what they want.

According to surveys, 83% of global travelers plan to prioritize sustainability in their choices, and 69% expect more sustainable options for their travel.

Imagine Seattle being the absolute leader in sustainable travel while we also improve our communities and our neighborhoods with well-designed, low-impact buildings.

So the idea of this policy is that we would take the Living Building Challenge that the city already has a pilot program on and set that as our standard, create tools on how to meet that standard or get close to that standard, and improve our industry and our standing in the industry going forward.

The budget item before you is a starting point to assess the work that needs to be done on this policy and to start working with stakeholders to move this conversation forward.

The coalition that has come together to advocate for this goes from organizations like the Sierra Club and 350 Seattle to MLK Labor and the Seattle Building Trades, community organizations like the Asian-Pacific Islander Coalition, Pewtertown SAGE, Greenpeace, Climate Solutions, Our Union, United Local Aid, and others.

So I think I'm really excited about this effort and this cooperation across the broad spectrum of our community.

So I urge your support and I urge you to engage with us in this conversation in the coming months.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

And let's go to the next person who has signed up.

Bob Messina.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we can.

Thank you very much.

My name is Bob Messina, and I am here to speak out against diverting one point one million dollars away from other city investments to transfer to the SDOT City Connector streetcar.

Taking away two travel lanes on First Avenue from Pioneer Square to Stewart Street only serves to further congest and bottleneck the movement of not only general traffic travel, but delivery vehicles coming in and out of the Pike Place market at all times of the day and night.

The streetcar design severely limits delivery times as well as places for turning into the market.

When people parallel park and ride share vehicles, pick up and drop off, it will further back up the 10 foot wide single travel lanes.

This is not a desirable roadway to put a streetcar link, which would be part of an already underperforming couple of streetcar lines.

I use my ORCA card to easily take the tunnel link light rail to Pioneer Square or International District and also do the same using many bus options on 3rd Avenue.

1st Avenue from Pike Street to Pioneer Square is a walking distance cultural pathway.

Future electric bus operations in this corridor would add to the fun and convenience without doing an outrageously expensive excavation on First Avenue.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Lastly, we have Irene Wall.

Good morning Council Members.

Perhaps the most important business you are responsible for is the wise use of the public's money.

Spending another million plus on the zombie First Avenue streetcar project is the opposite of responsible budgeting.

The project is dead.

Let it rest in peace and use the money saved to address real problems like the lack of basic pedestrian infrastructure in many neighborhoods.

The so-called connector will not bring workers back to downtown or attract more tourists.

It will make travel to and within downtown more difficult, and it will harm many businesses, including those in the Pike Place Market Historic District and those just outside the district, like the Showbox.

The results of any further study are sadly predictable.

It will cost more, take longer to build, return less revenue, and be another sinkhole for transit operations and maintenance dollars.

Support Amendment 8 and don't throw good money at this bad project.

Also, on the matter of the living hotels, how about this?

Impose a moratorium on the construction of any new hotels until either OSC or SDCI figures out what a living hotel is.

This will solve the problem of chasing after a problem with a solution when it's too late.

Get ahead of the problem.

Don't build any more hotels until we figure out what we can do to make them into a living hotel.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you all.

And let's go back to the remaining speakers in person.

Nick Settle.

And followed by Johnny Han and Heather Phil.

Hello, my name is Nick Seddon.

I'm going to read a letter that I sent in the other day to you all.

I was wanting to support Councilmember Peterson's Amendment 8 and divert the funds away from the streetcar and towards Vision Zero.

Not only has the streetcar project, I'm just going to say a bunch of things you already know.

Not only has the project already ballooned exorbitantly in price, ridership projections show that there is not enough usage to justify that high price tag.

There are much more pressing uses for those funds.

Along First Avenue, as previous speakers have said, There's ample infrastructure for mass transit, buses, electric trolley cables left over from the earlier trolleys.

These would be efficient, these would be less expensive, and they would do the trick that you're trying to get done.

tearing up First Avenue and making and turning it into a four-year dead zone and then drastically reducing access along the street would compound, that compounded with the serious adverse effect of the proposed streetcar would have a wildly adverse effect on many of the Pike Place Market business owners and more than 500 low-income senior residents who rely on First Avenue, the corner of First and Pine to make deliveries, to get pickups, and to live.

What's at risk here isn't the accessibility of the market for tourists, but for the people who live, work, and own businesses in this delicate market of ours.

The plan of three to four year construction on First Avenue, like I said, would be catastrophic to business owners at the market as well who are still recovering from the costly burden of loss of business from the COVID pandemic and who have bravely put up with 10 years of being hemmed in by construction on all sides, between hotels, between the waterfront, between its very own market project.

Again, I repeat, what is needed is not a way to bring bodies into the market, but a way to continue to support the unfettered access to Pike Place for the hundreds of small business owners, farmers, and mobility challenge senior residents who inhabit the place every day.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Johnny Han, and I've been a street performer in the market for 37 years.

Echoing Nick and others, I strongly urge this committee and the full city council to definitively abandon the plan for the First Avenue streetcar connector.

The project is wrong for many reasons.

It would take a perfectly viable and essential arterial in downtown Seattle and turn it into an utterly unnecessary, almost Disneyland-like conveyance for purposes of accommodating the tourism industry King County Metro has excellently functioning vehicles called buses that currently fulfill the purpose of moving people around the city.

Not that long ago, buses ran on First Avenue.

Why is it that city planners don't believe they could continue to do so in the future?

For those of us who live and or work in the market, the streetcar line would be a monumentally head-spinning and borderline insane thing to construct, eliminating curb lane parking, curtail and or eliminating loading and unloading of supplies and people, greatly inconveniencing market residents who require door-to-door transport, and generally turning First Avenue and the vicinity into a complete and total traffic hellscape.

I am mystified that the city officials pushing this project don't realize this.

I am also mystified that this idea has gained enough traction to get to the point that it's even up for consideration, but remarkably, it has.

Having said that, please, please, please say no to the First Avenue streetcar line.

We've got Heather Phil followed by Howard Anderson.

Hi, I'm Heather Peel.

I'm a lifelong Seattle resident and I've been active in the community in public safety and organizing for decades.

I wanted to start off my comments to talk about 3rd Avenue and the tie between this project and 3rd Avenue and the problems that are on it.

I used to lead a citizen's patrol on Aurora between the north end of the Aurora Bridge to North 46th Street.

And unlike farther north on Aurora, that stretch of Aurora does not have a lot of businesses open at night.

In fact, just there were motels.

It was like living next to a big alley.

And why is that?

Because it's a divided highway with a lot of vehicles going by, a huge amount of noise and air pollution.

3rd Avenue has replicated those conditions.

All the buses are on there and there's tremendous noise.

There are the beeps from the ramps going out, the horns, lots and lots of ambient noise.

And the businesses are closed.

I believe the solution to that problem in part is to bring the trolleybuses back onto First Avenue.

As a resident of Uptown, I can't get to the market except to go to Third and then come over from either Third and Virginia or Third and Pike.

Second of all, I wanted to address the impacts to Pike Place Market.

The market doesn't need more tourists.

The market needs people to come back from Seattle and shop there.

And so including trolleys that don't really connect up to where people need to go efficiently is not the solution.

I also want to talk to the danger of these trolleys.

I didn't know that, in fact, there's a study underway of the safety and performance of the existing trolley lines.

I put in a public disclosure request to SDOT in May, and I learned that since 2007, 11 people have been killed by those streetcars, nine of them on the First Hill line.

I'd like to share those statistics with you.

Thank you.

Lastly, we have Howard Anderson.

Good afternoon, Council.

Howard Anderson, been in downtown for a long time, developed properties on First Avenue and the Pike Place Market.

Had other properties, historic, mostly in the downtown area.

Recognize what we have.

You have First Avenue, and you have Stewart, and you have Jackson.

These are major gateway avenues and streets in this town.

Every one of them has a significant connection.

Belltown on First Avenue, Pike Place Market, Harvard Steps, Harvard steps, and the entry to the new waterfront.

They're all there.

It's a functional street.

It's the only street that we haven't tinkered with, with all the additional add-ons that cause a lot of confusion.

It services the Pike Place market in a major way.

Small businesses there, they need to get their regular deliveries, and it has to be, or they can't function.

And the big concern is we don't need a monorail to solve the problems.

We need more transportation on First Avenue.

It was taken away, put on third, bring it back immediately, and then let's plan a sufficient energy-free, clean shuttle that will connect the two monorails right now, bring them together.

And that is what we need, but immediately we need to get transportation back because people from Pioneer Square can't get up comfortably.

And I think if we can move ahead and do that, there's no study needs to be done.

We just need to get with the King County Metro and get this started and do the further study.

Thank you.

And that's all of the in-person sign up public comment.

Excellent, thank you very much.

I am going to go ahead and close public comment.

Thank you all for providing your.

Messages for the city council today, if you'd like to also double down and send that as a public comment written statement again, please send it to council at Seattle dot gov. Okay, thanks everybody.

Let's move on to item number 1 on our agenda.

Madam clerk.

Could you please read item 1 into the record?

Agenda item number one council bill one two zero six three oh an ordinance relating to the funding for housing and community development programs for briefing this for briefing discussion public hearing and possible vote

Wonderful.

I just want to thank you all for the opportunity to hear from our speakers today.

We will do a presentation on the legislation in front of us, and then we will have the opportunity for public hearing.

I hope that if that is out of order, our clerks or central staff will let me know.

but so that we understand what is being presented on first, then we will hear from members of the public who might want to provide comment on this as well.

Public comment on that opened up at 7.30 this morning, and we have offered an opportunity for people to speak to that item separately.

With that, I would like to invite our presenters to go ahead and introduce themselves as we talk about Council Bill 120630. This is the HSD 2023 Annual Action Plan Ordinance and HUD funding.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for the time that we're going to spend on this item.

It's critical to making sure that we continue to have a flow of funds for the federal grants managed by HUD.

My name is Deborah Reinhart.

I'm serving as the interim manager for the Federal Grants Management Unit in HSD.

Again, I really appreciate that both Council Central staff and the committee have allowed us to have the opportunity to hold the public hearing in consideration of the final 2023 Annual Action Plan.

This will assist us to complete the plan so that we may submit the plan to HUD by the deadline of August 16, 2023. Little bit of background, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee reviewed the draft 2023 annual action plan on December 13th of 2022, including a public hearing at that time, and was briefed that the allocation amounts included in the draft were placeholders until HUD provided us with final allocation amendments.

HUD announced those grantee awards February 27th of this year, and we've been working in coordination with partner departments and agencies, city budget office and the mayor's office since then to finalize our proposed allocations for this program year.

The 2023 annual plan represents the sixth and final year of our current 2018 and through 2023 consolidated plan.

That is a higher level plan that lays out the city's goals for use of the four federal grants governed by the plan.

And those grants are the Community Development Block Grant, the Housing Opportunities for Persons Living with HIV and AIDS, the Emergency Solutions Grants, and the Home Ownership Partnerships Program.

More opportunities to brief the council on the work is already underway because we are launching into the 2024-2028 consolidated plan for our new period of performance.

The 2023 annual action plan includes $19.5 million in allocations to projects that will receive funding this year.

The activities range from services supporting people who are experiencing homelessness development of affordable rental housing, job training for refugees and immigrants, and making parks more accessible for low and moderate income communities and for people with disabilities, as just an example.

In this year, we basically are funding activities that we have historically funded.

There are not significant changes to those programs.

The only highlights I would lift up would be the fact that the city has also received since 2019 $41.1 million in CARES Act funding, and we are rapidly working through the winding down period for the projects that are funded with CARES Act funds per HUD's deadlines for expenditures of that money.

The only other highlight I would note is that the Office of Economic Development is expanding their tenant-based rehab for businesses and commercial properties, finding that they're seeing a high demand for that kind of work to sustain jobs in a difficult economic time.

So I will stop there and entertain any comments or questions from the committee.

Thank you so much, and I don't believe we have anybody from central staff here with us as well to describe this item.

If we do, please go ahead and jump on in central staff.

I will just add to that colleagues as you just heard the legislation adopts the 2023 annual action plan as required each year to accept grant ordinance from US Department of housing and urban development.

The plan describes how the city will spend for federal grants, CDBG, HOPWA, ESG, and the HOME funds.

This is probably triggering a lot of thoughts about how we spent all of those funds in 2020 and 2021. All of those acronyms were very familiar to us.

As a reminder, the city estimated the 2023 grant funds amount from the four programs and appropriated amounts were included in the 2023 budget.

This year, the city received notice that the final grant funds amount received notice of what those actual final grant funds amount were.

And therefore, this legislation updates the AAP and the 2023 adopted budget with those correct numbers.

I do see Jennifer Labreck from Central Staff with us here.

And of course, please jump in if you have anything else.

I am here, but I do not have anything to add.

I think Deborah did a great summary.

Okay, great.

And our Chair of Human Services, did you have anything you'd like to add?

Oh, of course, there you are.

Your hand is up.

Perfect timing.

Oh, Madam Madam Vice Chair, I cannot hear you.

If we can turn on the mics for the oh, there we go.

Madam Vice Chair, you can start over, please.

Thank you so much.

So just.

Recognizing that the plan confirms that the human services department will have a little less than 1.4 million for capital community facilities improvements investments for nonprofit organizations in 2023 and I understand that central staff has questions into HSD about the process for accessing those funds and eligibility requirements and just wanted to uplift that that that was an inquiry that had been put in on my behalf and I look forward to learning more.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Madam Vice Chair.

Okay.

With that, we are going to go ahead and go into our required public hearing at this time.

As presiding officer, I'm now opening up the public hearing on Council Bill 120630 related to an ordinance for funding for housing and community development programs adopting the City of Seattle's 2023 Annual Action Plan regarding 2018 to 2023. The online registration, as I noted, opened up at 7.30 this morning.

Do we have anybody who has signed up for public comments specifically on this item, either in person or remotely, Madam Clerk?

Do not.

We do not.

Okay, going once going twice.

All right, then we will go ahead and close the public comment at this point.

We don't have anybody signed up for public comment.

We will go ahead and close the public hearing and thank you very much.

Miss Reinhart for your presentation.

And is there anything else you'd like to add before we consider this legislation?

Thanks for council's continued report over the years we've been fortunate to receive this funding.

Okay.

Any additional comments from our colleagues?

Okay.

At this point, I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120630. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

Seeing no further questions and no hands raised, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120630?

Council Member Harbold.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is a five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the August 8th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Thanks for being here with us today and thanks for the overview of this important item.

Thank you.

Okay, madam clerk, could you please read item number 2 into the record agenda item number 2 fiscal note enhancements for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

And with us here today, we have, um, deputy director, Ali, and council central staff, Tom, who is with us every budget year and works very closely with us on fiscal transparency matters.

As you saw on our last agenda item, or excuse me on our last committee, we had an agenda item that.

Related to the fiscal note enhancement and budget transparency bills that I'm looking forward to teeing up with this call with my colleagues here on the fiscal committee.

I have asked central staff to prepare 2 pieces of legislation for this committee's consideration later this summer and fall, and we'll have a chance to hear more about those as we get the presentation from central staff.

Very interested, as you heard from me in the last committee meeting in a resolution to update and reflect our current black practices for the city's annual action budget practice and mid year supplemental changes and to create new transparency opportunities via a fiscal transparency program in the Seattle municipal code to codify certain fiscal transparency reporting requirements and processes.

The intent of this legislative package is to really memorialize in policy specific processes and practices that will enhance the fiscal transparency of the council of the legislative branch and our partnership with the executive and the executive branch, including city budgets office.

I want to also remind us that we got a brief overview of the CBO and central staff work that they collectively did thanks to our budget amendment last year that asked CBO and central staff to work on a fiscal policy and transparency work group to provide recommendations to us.

The central staff have prepared a resolution that would help us move forward on some of these recommendations and my direction at the last committee, I recommended that we move forward on recommendation.

Number 1, regarding the biannual budget direction, including the new approach to maybe your biannual review recommendations number 2 and 3 from that report.

which set the cadence for mid-year budget changes, and recommendation number 8, which define the steps for planning reserves, including creating an appropriated risk reserve that is operationalized in the 2025 and 2026 budget process.

Continuing this theme and giving additional opportunity for Tom Mikesell to do the presentation that he and our Deputy Director, Ali Panucci, had planned for last meeting.

We've offered time on this agenda to ensure that we can have a discussion with central staff, That further analyzes the central staff and CBO recommendations and gives us a preview of some of the processes that might go into place and setting up legislation and resolution to codify those recommendations that I suggested at the last committee meeting.

With that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it on over to our central staff team.

Thank you for your patience as we had this item carried over from last agenda.

Deputy Director Panucci and Tom Iksil, welcome.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Committee members of your central stuff.

I'm really going to turn this over to Tom to walk you through the presentation and I'll just echo what chair.

highlighted, which, you know, the part of the goal of this work is really to improve the fiscal analysis that is part of your decision-making process on legislation.

So to improve the information and transparency as you are considering both the short and long-term impacts of any legislation before you.

And with that, I will turn it over to Tom.

Thank you, Deputy Director Panucci.

Good morning, members of the Finance and Housing Committee.

I'm Tom Mikesell with your central staff.

This morning, as has been noted, we will be discussing the research that we have done with regards to enhancing our fiscal note, which are the tool that council uses and the public to evaluate the summary of what a bill does and how much it costs in very simple terms.

I will note that as the chair noted, this was originally agendized for the last Finance and Housing Committee, which had quite a bit of discussion.

And hence, this would move to the successive committee.

And given the chair's indications that there would be codified elements of this research, I've reorganized the presentation, reflecting that early direction that you'll see.

So it's a slightly different version.

It includes the FIM information.

It just basically organizes things in an item that would be codified and items that would be handled administratively.

And if we could just jump in, I'll go through some of these items fairly brief.

I'll just talk about a brief overview of the research that was performed and who we talked with.

Then we'll dive into the best practices that were identified and those items that would be most appropriate for future legislation, talk about the items that were unearthed in the more informal observational discussion with CBO and staff, and that can be handled kind of at an administrative level.

talk about next steps, and then I'm happy to answer any questions at the end.

We can look at the next.

So with regard to fiscal notes, these will not be unfamiliar to any member of the committee, having seen quite a few of them over the years.

But again, they essentially are the way by which the communication is made from the executive and legislative branch of what a bill does and how much it costs.

And then if there are any people added, and a variety of other elements that have been added through the years, including race and social justice impact, climate impact, and things of that nature.

So it's intended to be a transparency tool to communicate what a bill does for decision makers when they're deliberating on each legislation.

And there are really only three places in municipal code and Seattle law that dictate The framework around this one.

One is Council rules which are adopted every two years, most recently in Resolution 3209 that simply states that all bills will have fiscal.

That's essentially the payment.

There are a couple of resolutions that have been passed over the last decade or so.

Earlier in 2010 was Resolution 31203. which requires an enhanced level of fiscal note for capital projects that are significant, I believe the threshold is $10 million or higher, and that have a public-private component.

So meaning we are partnering with a private entity on a substantial project and there's enhanced risk analysis to do the due diligence to ensure that the private partner is capable of living up to their side of the agreement.

And then next, more recently in 2020, Council passed or Council adopted Resolution 31933, which added specific climate change questions to the fiscal note.

So the current practice is the bills are put forth by the executive and legislative branch, and those branches are the ones who fill out the fiscal note, which we have a template that we use for this that asks if there's a question and provides tables that are filled out, and then that's submitted with the bill.

And that's it.

And the changes that are made throughout the years to those templates are largely handled through an informal process.

And through discussions with CBO and council members and others interested parties, There's been some interest in enhancing the transparency around fiscal notes that will cover kind of the, where we're stronger, where we're, where we could, you know, stand to do some work in the next step, which is a review of best practice and other staff occupation.

And so just to kind of explain that specific piece, I did, there are two basic approaches.

One was internet research.

I found a, study that was performed by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which did essentially a review of the 50 state governments, all of which have some legislative process where they pass legislation and they are interested in what they cost and what they do.

And they reviewed all of those various state processes and figured what were determined to be the best practices amongst that group.

So the first question is, how is the state analysis relevant for a city?

And my belief is that an actual state government, given that it is divided government with an executive branch and a legislative branch at arm's length, is more similar to the Seattle form than, say, what many city governments have, which is the council manager, where there is the legislative branch and then a professional manager.

So there's no, I guess, push-pull of a divided government in many cities across the nation.

So a review of the state government approach seemed relevant for this work.

The other piece of the research was was talking with people and applying observations of things that have been experienced over the years.

And that's more informal, admittedly, but it also highlights some interesting ways that we can enhance our process.

So if we can look at the next slide, this is essentially where I have shuffled things from the prior presentation.

And all of this is covered in detail in the memo that was attached to the agenda.

But I have placed things in those items that seemed best fit for including in a potential legislative package and those items that perhaps can be continued to be handled through an administrative fashion with a city budget offer.

And many of these things are things that we actually already do.

We would just be codifying our good practice.

So one thing noticed in the best practice review was that it's a good practice or best practice to produce for all pieces of legislation.

So as I mentioned previously, our current council rules, actually that is the single requirement.

So we meet that standard.

That's been a resolution or that has been in the council rules, but not in any other part of state municipal code.

And it can change every two years with all other council rules.

So the concept would be to codify that good practice that we already have.

Next, similarly, is posting all fiscal notes online, which is something that we also do.

All our fiscal notes are put with the legislative record along with the legislation that's submitted and potentially adopted by council.

The next two items are things that we do not do at standard practice but are discussed as best practices for transparency reasons and usability.

And one is to project longer-term impact.

And this is perhaps most acutely interesting, given that we are dealing with a budget challenge beginning in 2025. And when Council is making decisions about items that may have a cost, there is utility in understanding what those costs are in the future, particularly with items that seemingly have low cost in the near term, but then perhaps the cost could be greater in the future.

So the proposal would be to require that all pieces of legislation would have some estimate in the fiscal note that has a multi-year component, perhaps as many years as included in the financial plan, which you have all seen through prior to that presentation.

And then a final best practice element would be to revise the estimate.

So the fiscal notes are compiled initially based on the original legislative proposal, but They are not in all cases updated based on amendments that get made.

And so what this would essentially entail, it would be to stipulate that the fiscal note, the final fiscal note for all legislation that is ultimately adopted into law would be updated to reflect the as-adopted version.

So this would actually require significant, or not significant, but additional effort to ensure that the record is kept up to date But it would then guarantee that when staff or the public are looking in the future to understand the different frameworks for legislation that were decided at the time, like what the plans were, what they were going to call up in the future.

And so it doesn't communicate whether or not they were on track or not.

There are two other items which are similar to what I discussed in terms of our current framework.

And I see a question.

I'm not sure Madam Chair.

I think I think I might ask folks to hold questions for the end just so that we can see it all.

Oh super quick.

OK go ahead.

The revised estimates as needed.

Does that mean like after the legislation is passed that there would be going back and updating the fiscal note.

Is that what you're suggesting.

Vice-chair Herbold, that is exactly.

Okay.

That would be new.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I just might add, Council Member Herbold, the goal there would primarily be to update it between the committee actions and the full council because most of the time, the changes happen in committee if the process is working as intended.

Our goal would be central staff will endeavor to update so the summary actually describes what the bill is as recommended by the committee and any fiscal impacts to it.

Similar to the bill reports you see at the state, ideally, when you go back in the future and look at the record, you could read the fiscal note and summary and it would give you a general sense of what happened and what the final effect of the legislation is.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

The items that I mentioned in the prior couple of slides ahead, The various resolutions that we do have that, actually, if we could go back, that we do have in place, the proposal here would be to simply make reference within the ordinance to refer back to include those requirements as indicated in the resolution.

And I want to make a particular specific point about the private partner project enhanced analysis, because this was covered in more detail in the memo and in the and the prior presentation that I had planned two weeks ago.

This is with regard to other observation.

Last fall, there was, members may recall, there was a discussion about a need to put additional enhanced fiscal support to the Aquarium Overlook.

project or I believe that's the right one.

There's a public component and then there's a private piece.

But there was a request to place initial $20 million into a project that essentially falls right squarely in the face of private partner project.

And I did research back given that there was indications of financial stress that were requiring that action at that time.

I looked back at the records to see if the enhanced risk analysis metrics were gathered and presented for the, when the decision was made to move forward with that project.

And I could not find anything in the record.

So the prior memo and the presentation essentially recommended that A way to ensure that that information is included in the future would be to specifically ask the question in the form in some manner to say, has this information been gathered and please attach it accordingly.

Just to kind of as an additional prompt to ensure that we are getting all the information before council members when they're making these decisions.

Given that we are looking at a more codified approach for this, we would simply include in the in the ordinance indication to include the information as requested in the resolution.

So those are the items that would be part of the bill.

If we can look at the next slide, these are items that we feel can be addressed just through an informal process, working with CBO, Central Staff, other members of Central Staff and the department.

One is capital project reference.

The current template has a space to include a capital project reference, but sometimes it's unclear what is meant by that.

And I say that because in the financial system, there are major capital projects, which are those with which you will be most familiar, those items that are adopted in the six-year capital improvements program, the kind of high name recognition projects But then there are also smaller, minor projects that are created at the department level.

And simply what this would do is include a prompt that when we talk about a capital project and information that's provided to the council and the public, that we talk about the highest level.

So basically those, whatever the project that is being changed that relates to a capital project in the PICS or CIP is the reference that should be included.

So that should be a fairly easy thing to modify.

Shouldn't be much friction with that.

The next element is absorb cost.

And this is a case where you will see a proposal that will say, we're going to add some additional responsibility for a department, and the department is able to accomplish that within their existing budget.

So that statement on a faith seems fine.

However, it sort of leaves out the information about what the actual proposal actually costs.

And the kind of concern here is that there is a de facto decision being made about those additional resources that are being used to absorb the cost.

Essentially, if there is excess slack in the department to be able to pick up a new responsibility and council determines that they do not want to proceed with additional responsibility, are those Slack resources available to be repurposed elsewhere?

So this is, well, admittedly, a more, a bigger lift, could take some additional work because at times it's easier to make the statement of absorbed cost than it is to calculate what they are.

But we've had the initial discussion with CBO, and there's an understanding at least what we're trying to get at.

So I think through an administrative, further ongoing discussions with our partners um, we can improve this space and try and provide enhanced information about, um, about costs that are being absorbed in bill.

Um, next, uh, and this is kind of down the line of, um, of, of less significant, but important yet still, um, is that sometimes the template will ask simple binary questions such as, are there other costs of doing this legislation where you could say no.

Well, that doesn't really tell much other than just that, that kind of binary answer.

So we're developing a way to ask more open-ended questions to kind of explain why this doesn't have any additional costs or, you know, kind of explain your answer on the upfront as opposed to offering the easy out of a yes or no response.

And again, similar to absorb costs, this would take some work with our partners, but it would improve intent would be to improve the depth of the information that is gathered through the form.

And then finally there are spaces where there are in the current template where information is requested whether or not additional work had been done but it is not made clear that that actually having those additional reports that inform the response would be also useful.

And so things like Environmental impact statements or RISJR toolkits are referenced in the template.

Essentially, did you do an RISJR toolkit?

But it doesn't actually ask for that information to be attached.

So the suggestion is you just ask that that information be attached to the template as well, just to kind of flesh out the legislative record.

And so these things on this slide would be more handled through the administrative process.

the prior items would be potentially included in legislation.

But one thing I would offer, and this is kind of coming out of the discussions with CBO, there is not a recommendation to actually codify a specific form.

It's easier that if we have the the legislative framework established for what minimum requirements are, and then we can work together across branches of how to build a form or to modify the form to meet those standards.

That's probably the best approach, because if we codify a form, then every time we want to change it, we need to change the law.

And that can be potentially cumbersome for everybody involved.

So that was kind of, those are the main, outcomes of the research.

As the Chair indicated, we are in process of developing legislation that includes items from this work, as well as the work with CBO and central staff on other fiscal transparency enhancement.

The changes would all be in effect as of January 1st, as the current plan, to give time for the departments and us to all get on the same page of how the process will work going forward.

And then the other administrative elements will just continue the discussion that are always ongoing with DBO and the department.

Well, thank you.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, just to close, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Excellent.

Well, let's keep the PowerPoint up just to see if anybody has any question about a specific page number.

But I want to thank you for the work that you've done.

I know this has been many years in concept, in development, and then with the work group that CBO and Central Staff participated in, a lot clearer, I think, roadmap for how to concretize some of the strategies that we've seen in other jurisdictions or that we'd like to replicate from the state process.

That allows for greater transparency, regardless of who is sitting in these seats as the council and the executive work on creating additional transparency and stability for our budgeting process.

I think these are really smart budgeting practices that hopefully will live on for many, many years.

Are there any other questions?

Council Member Herbold.

Thanks.

Just one other question.

The central staff memo notes that to implement these enhancements, there's a need for additional resources to support central staff doing so.

Have we begun the analysis on that piece or is that on our to-do list?

Go ahead.

If I'm, you know, I haven't read through the memo as early as today, but I do recall there was, there's a part of the memo about nonpartisan estimates, which was one of the best practice recommendation from the state level analysis.

And right now our process is non-nonpartisan.

The most fiscal notes are produced actually by the executive branch or executive legislation.

and Council Central staff in most cases have fiscal notes for legislative proposals that can come from the Council, which we are nonpartisan staff, though one could view Central staff as favoring the legislative branch.

So we really don't have a nonpartisan option.

other than to beef up central staff, which is not part of this recommendation, is not part of this proposal.

So the recommendation, or it wasn't a recommendation, it was just a finding that central staff does not have the capacity to prepare the fiscal notes itself, but that is not a recommendation coming out of this work at this point.

That is correct.

And what we have offered to bridge is to Enhance our, enhance our scrutiny from the fiscal policy team, particularly in terms of those items that are about the highest perceived impact to ensure that, you know, the various standards are being met and that they're all.

So not a resource issue for the enhancements.

Yeah, if I could just know, I think like what we endeavor to do was.

identify improvements that we can do that we think we can take on within our existing lean and mean team of central staff and improve the information coming to council without needing to request additional resources.

There's always opportunity in the future, but given all the resource constraints right now, we're trying to make improvements within our existing capacity.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate you teasing that out and also not part of the recommendations for this process.

I think visionary thinking, though, if folks are familiar with the Office of Fiscal Management at the state level, FM has its own set of staff that do in depth analysis.

you know, visionary thinking one day if we can work towards that type of structure and have the resources.

Obviously, that is one of the best practices, as Tom noted, but is not part of the immediate recommendations here for us today.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I, in general, always err on this side of more information is better the earlier the as early as possible.

And so I like this conversation.

And I understand that there will be probably legislation coming forward.

And so this is a conversation that's just starting.

The central staff memo came with a whole bunch of examples of other governmental entities that use fiscal notes and examples of those fiscal notes.

So that's great to choose from.

I do have a question about the emphasis on nonpartisan and the best practices here.

Because that, I believe, is, well, you said yourself, Tom that this is referring to state practices and in fact the state does you know have two parties usually that are at play here and So how does this nonpartisan lens fit within the city of Seattle because both the executive and the legislative branches are here, nonpartisan.

And so what is the problem that we're trying to be fixed?

Is the basic message that when we get legislation from the executive that their fiscal notes are somehow biased and ours aren't?

Those are some of the things that I'm just wondering.

So obviously, maybe now is not the time to answer those questions, but those are what I'm going to be bringing forward.

Or you can respond now if you would like.

Yeah.

Thank you for the question, Council Member Nelson.

So nonpartisan is, in the state rep example, is referring to organizations that are typically created to be outside of their respective branches.

And I, in fact, worked at one of those in a nonpartisan fiscal agency where you weren't governed by either party.

You were basically serving the process.

There right now, the part in Seattle, as I indicated, fiscal notes that are executive branch legislation are in fact determined, are made by the executive branch, and we do the fiscal notes for the legislative branch.

not making any specific declaration that they are biased in any way, though there's the perception of bias when somebody is basically putting a cost on their own information.

And this would, if nothing else, is a way to alleviate the perception of bias by having a non-affiliated organization basically provide the ultimate of the impact.

Um, but again, not part of the recommendation.

It's just something that was part of the best practice in terms of the review of the different state processes, because in some states, for example.

Um, Washington state, I believe is done by, by the, by the.

Executive branch and so.

And that in the CBP work is viewed as a partisan approach.

So having an actually organization established to be outside the process would be determined to be the best practice.

Well, my staff had worked in Olympia, and they were explaining a little bit how it works there.

And fiscal notes are produced by an organization that might be affiliated with the executive, but that are decidedly not affiliated with you know, the Democratic or the Republican Party.

So, anyway.

Great.

Thanks for a preview of some of your questions, and good question.

Again, a great example, as you noted from your staff as well, Office of Financial Management, OFM, preparing the fiscal notes is a great example.

You said sort of adjacent to an executive branch, but not partisan at all in terms of who's appointing folks or where the analysis comes from.

That said, this is all, I think, really just driven, as Tom noted, from best practices, deep analysis over a number of years, but especially over the last six months or so with CBO on the strategies for how we can move forward with some initial enhancements with much bigger visionary goals in the future.

I look forward to having that discussion.

We will again have this.

Oh, gosh, Ali and Tom, can you remind me when we have the schedule?

Is it in September in September?

That's right.

Okay.

So, colleagues, we have 2 more meetings between now and September.

We are going to work on other items between now and then, but we did just want to keep this up for you.

And, of course, central staff at your disposal.

If you have additional follow up questions, I'm also happy to answer any questions on sort of the intent and desire here.

Um, but wanted to make sure we allocated time to discuss this.

So, is there anything else for this item before we move on?

All right, we'll look forward to more questions and more discussion coming up in September.

Thanks for walking us through that presentation and as well want to extend our appreciation to CBO for the participation with central staff in the transparency work group that you completed.

Okay, thank you.

Madam clerk.

Could you please read them items number 3 and 4 into the record.

Item number three, Council Bill 120617, an ordinance relating to acceptance of fundings from non-city sources.

And agenda item number four, Council Bill 120618, an ordinance amending Ordinance 126725, which adopted the 2023 budget for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Okay, great.

So we have basically the supplemental budget for us to consider for the remaining part of 2023. we also have the opportunity to accept grant ordinances that are being shared with the city of Seattle via private funds, subsidized loans, and other corresponding agreements.

We're going to go ahead and take up the grant acceptance ordinance first.

Madam clerk already read that item into the record.

We do have 1 amendment that I'm aware of from council member Morales.

What else I don't see present here with us.

So, in lieu of her being here as a guest to our committee, I will summarize the amendment for our consideration.

My goal is to walk through each of the 2 items and then we will.

Sorry, I saw a hand.

I just want to make sure council member Nelson.

I'll come right back to you.

My goal is to walk through the grant.

Sorry.

Oh, okay.

Great.

We will walk through the grant acceptance ordinance.

1st, any amendments we will consider and we will vote on grant acceptance.

Then we'll go to the supplemental.

We'll walk through each of the amendments will ideally vote on each of the amendments that the sponsor would like us to still consider today.

And if we have time and.

will and the ability.

We will vote this out today because we have a lot of other items coming up in August here for us.

But we also know that the executive and the departments are eager to have final answers on the supplemental allotments for 2023. So that is the plan for the next 45 minutes or so.

And I'll turn it over to Ali.

Thank you.

Welcome back, Deputy Director Panucci.

Thank you.

So, as you described, there are 2 bills before you, I think, procedurally, if we're going to take the.

Grant acceptance ordinance 1st, you will want to move that bill.

So it's before the committee then add in can describe the 1 amendment to it.

And then you can consider if you want to go on that amendment and then vote that bill out before we move on to the 2nd bill.

Great advice colleagues, I moved to that.

The committee recommends passage of council bill.

1, 2, 0, 6, 1, 7, the grant acceptance ordinance.

Is there a 2nd.

2nd, thank you very much.

It's been moved and 2nd, the grant acceptance ordinance is now in front of us.

I'll turn it over to Ed and to walk us through an overview again.

Just remind us of the grant acceptance ordinance and then we will go into presentation on the amendment.

Sounds great.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the committee.

My name is Ed Sissage with Council Central staff, and this is the second session of Council Bill 120617, the Mid-Year Grant Acceptance and Appropriation Ordinance.

As a brief reminder, the grants bill would provide authority for city departments to accept and appropriate the expenditure of grant revenues from non-city sources.

And we provided an overview and discussed this bill on July 19th.

So the focus for the committee today, as you mentioned, is to consider amendments.

There is one grant ordinance-related amendment.

So I'll start and stop with the loan amendment for Council Bill 120617. This is...

Thanks, Sally.

So authored by Council Member Morales, this amendment would accept and appropriate a $180,000 grant from the Department of Commerce for social housing public development authority startup costs as required by initiative measure 135. Accepting this grant now would allow FAS to move quicker with contracting with the PDA as soon as the city receives the award.

Great, thank you very much.

On behalf of Councilmember Morales, and we extended this invitation as well to any Councilmember who is not part of the Finance Committee, we've asked if anybody had amendments.

Councilmember Morales did.

She's not a member of this committee.

So I will go ahead and move this on her behalf.

I move adoption of Amendment Number 1 as described by Central Staff and as proposed by Councilmember Morales.

Is there a second?

Thank you very much.

It has been moved and seconded to consider amendment number 1. as you heard from central staff, this is about accepting funding from the state and just freeing us up to receive that funding later based on their approval process.

I do not have any concerns as the chair with this amendment and appreciate the partnership with the state legislature and executive departments in supporting this initiative that was passed by a vote of the people.

Freeing up the ability for us to receive this fund seems consistent with our directive.

Is there additional comments?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number one?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much the motion carries and amendment number 1 is adopted and just want to confirm with you that we are not aware of any additional amendments to the grant acceptance ordinance.

At the same, that is correct.

Okay, so we will open it up for additional comments before final passage of the grant acceptance ordinance council member Peterson.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I realize it's usually good news for the city government to receive grants from other levels of government, so I do plan to vote yes on this bill to accept grants.

For many of my Eastlake constituents, however, I do want to register concerns with item 1.12 on attachment A of this proposed Council Bill 120617. Item 1.12 would accept $65 million of tax dollars from the federal government for this project driven by our Seattle Department of Transportation.

It's a project that would tear up all two miles of East Lake Avenue, disrupting the financial viability of small businesses still struggling to survive after the pandemic and arise in property crimes in that area.

In addition to potentially harming small businesses that oppose this disruptive project, and the removal of two miles of street parking on both sides of the street, this project would actually remove bus stops.

It would reduce the number of bus stops along that route, and then reconfigure the entire avenue, primarily for the benefit of cyclists who have the time and ability to commute from bike, by bike from North Seattle to South Lake Union and downtown, rather than taking the number 70 bus or other buses serving that area from King County Metro, and rather than taking the new light rail stations in Roosevelt and the U District.

Frankly, I'm not sure how our congressional delegation can justify the Federal Transit Administration spending these tax dollars when viewing this project through a lens of equity, when there are so many needs for King County Metro buses in lower-income areas of South Seattle and South King County.

I've raised these concerns and asked these questions of SDOT for the past four years, but SDOT remains determined to plow ahead with this project.

To be fair, this route was a line on the map of the bicycle master plan of 2014 and mentioned as part of the move Seattle levy in 2015. I realize that authorizing SDOT to accept these federal funds is different from actually building the project.

So whether and how best to address this project will ultimately be between the small businesses and residents of Eastlake, the new council member representing that area, which it's actually now moved into District 3, and the Harrell administration.

So if the administration intends to go ahead with this project, I hope at the very least they will deploy the Office of Economic Development to assist those businesses in advance of the construction disruption and the aftermath of the project.

But I will be voting yes on this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Are there any additional comments?

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Likewise, I just wanted to recognize one of the grants in particular that overlaps with D1 needs, and that is the FEMA funds of $500,000 for the Hiawatha Community Center seismic upgrades.

This is very, very good news.

This award decision had been stalled for, I think, a year.

And that decision delay held up additional renovation work at Hiawatha and required significant work and advocacy from both the Parks Department, my office, and community members.

This is a really important milestone in the work at the community center at Hiawatha.

And it's been closed since before the pandemic and is very, very missed by the community.

So neighbors who have been closely tracking the progress of this project will be thrilled to know that the funding has been received.

In addition, just for the viewing public, if anybody's listening from D1.

There's also 1.8 million also to parks for Coleman Pool renovations and 90,000 from our County Flood Control District for fish access study and conceptual design at Herring's House Park across from the Longhouse.

All good news for District 1, thank you.

That's what we like to do, lift up good news when we are delivering for constituents, especially on long awaited projects.

Are there any additional comments that folks would like to add?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the adoption of the, on the adoption of the bill as amended?

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

Yes.

Councilmember Nelson?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair that is five in favor and none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended, Council Bill 120617, will be sent to the August 8th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Thanks, all.

Okay, the one last big item in front of us, and I will ask for a time check.

I did think that this might take about 45 minutes to get through.

If folks do have a hard stop at 1130, please let me know if you're able to stay to noon.

That would be fantastic.

But feel free to let me know as we go through, maybe we'll go through faster than I anticipate.

Council Member Peterson, just want to confirm that's an old hand, correct?

Yes, thank you.

Excellent.

OK, great.

Well, as we move into the supplemental bill, I have some opening comments.

I would like to get the bill in front of us and then I'll make some of those opening comments.

OK, so, colleagues, I move that the committee recommend passage of the council bill one two zero six one eight.

The ordinance that adopts the twenty twenty three supplemental budget and twenty twenty three twenty twenty eight capital improvement program.

Is there a second?

Thank you very much.

It has been moved and seconded.

The ordinance is now in front of us for the supplemental budget.

And this gives us the chance to have a discussion and debate about the substance of the base bill and the amendments that you have teed up.

Thank you for your partnership with central staff and in some cases our office to move these amendments forward here today.

I want to offer just a little bit of framing as we head into the supplemental budget discussion.

Again, the 2023 2024 calendar year budgets were intended to be packaged together as a biennial budget.

So this is a supplemental for the remaining portion of the first year of what was intended to be a biennial budget process this year.

It's not a true biennial, but it is our best attempt to try to make sure that we are looking out at least two years to develop a biennial budget framework.

As we head into discussing the last five months of 2023 and how supplemental changes would be considered, I'd like to offer some observations as we move into the implications of some of the suggested changes in the base bill and offer a framework.

The implications of using some small amounts of general fund balance or underspend to support limited one time budget amendments are peppered throughout this bill.

The supplemental budget that we received had allocations of.

underspend or balances that we're supporting one time amendments to our supplemental budget.

And I think that it's important to call this out and have a discussion about it.

I believe that it is important to discuss this, especially given that we've heard from multiple presentations from central staff.

and our city budgets office, we know that there is an impending general fund gap between revenue and expenses of over $200 million projected beginning in 2025. We would have been dealing with this gap in revenue and expenses this year and next year had we not offered some flexibility for using higher than anticipated jumpstart revenue, meaning, Money that had come in from jumpstart that was.

Um, above the expenses dictated and prescribed in our 2020 2020 spend plan, because more funding was coming in than anticipated.

We were able to use some of that funding from jumpstart.

To ensure that there was not this gap in in expenses and revenue and really make sure that we are preventing against deep cuts layoffs and program reductions in this 2023 and 2024 budget.

So again, about 214Million dollar gap expected to begin in 2025. We also heard in the May presentation in this committee that even after incorporating the potential 2024 cost increases that the city budget office was able to share with central staff and after reducing the jumpstart transfer to the general fund pursuant to the funds flexibility ordinance that council authorized in last year's budget, there is still about a $30 million amount of unobliged 1 time general fund balance available and throughout central staff's analysis.

We have identified that there is about a 1.25Million dollar.

In need for 1 time general fund underspend to support mid year council budget actions.

So.

$30 million in unobliged one-time funding.

Great.

Central staff's analysis identified about $1.25 million of one-time underspent to support council budget actions.

Okay.

These funds can be used now.

And as you'll see from our conversation, I'm going to be supporting a number of the requests from our colleagues.

I have one small item of $50,000 as well.

But I'm going to be supportive of many of these efforts today, maybe not all of them.

But I think it's important to identify that we are using these funds now for emerging needs identified by the council.

And I think that it is a good idea and it is prudent for the council to recognize that we are acting on what we perceive to be needs in the community.

If we don't act on this, we also know that they will most certainly be used by the mayor's proposed 2024 budget proposal for priorities that the administration identifies that would be an increase over baseline costs.

So I think if we were just purely looking at this from a budget need, perhaps we would be identifying how we could identify every single dollar of that 31 plus million dollar amount that central staff identified and putting it into reserves to prepare ourselves for 2024. I just don't think that we have reached consensus that that is going to be the approach for the upcoming Fiscal year budget for 2024, so given that council colleagues have identified priorities that you would like to see that funds used for, I will be supporting some of those efforts here today.

These are 1 time funds, though I want to underscore.

These are 1 time funds that central staff has flagged both the 30Million and the 1.25Million.

These do not help us solve our ongoing budget deficit.

So, even.

Even though I will be supporting some of these efforts today, I want to raise that there is a greater risk when we put funding in for supplemental needs now if we are not truly intending for these to be one time in nature.

There are a number of items in the proposed supplemental budget that we received that include ongoing budget ads, which will increase ongoing cost from the base budget, which will only increase our projected deficit going forward.

I just want us to be very transparent.

And acknowledge that is in the supplemental budget as proposed, and we are going to be adding some things today.

Many of which are 1 time.

Thank you so much.

If they are not one time, we have to acknowledge that there is going to be an ongoing inflation of that deficit that's already projected.

And as I noted in our last committee meeting, there are examples in the bill before us where the executive's proposal is adding new positions that are backed by temporary salary savings, but those are temporary salary savings.

So if we include those, it would add to the deficit if we ever want to fill those vacant positions in the future, not that that's being proposed in the near term.

But in the future, if we wanted to those positions remain, and we run the risk of having an expanded deficit as well from that perspective, using identified 1 time funds to support 1 time emerging needs.

seems to be exactly what the supplemental budget is supposed to be used for.

That's why I will be supportive of some of these efforts here today.

I think that that is more prudent than adding ongoing positions with this uncertain future and the funding situation that we have.

And I will be supporting many of the efforts to use this funding source, this one-time funding source that central staff has helped identify for these limited ads as a sustainable option for the remainder of the 2023 budget.

But I just wanted to be very transparent again with folks because I know central staff really underscores this for us in the last 3 years.

Every time we use 1 time funding for need, that's truly ongoing, like adding staffing positions.

It only inflates the gap between expenses and revenue in the future.

So, from a transparency perspective, I wanted to share that.

Before we get into the amendments, again, colleagues, I will turn it to the sponsor of the amendment to present their amendment, to make the motion to consider it, and then we'll have a discussion about it.

We'll vote on each one as we go forward.

Before we do that, central staff, would you like to tee up an overview of the supplemental?

This is the second discussion of Council Bill 120618 as well.

The mid-year supplemental bill, which is, as a reminder, would amend the adopted budget through supplemental changes.

And you summarized it perfectly well, Chair Mosqueda.

So we provided an overview and discussed this bill on July 19th, and the focus today is to consider amendments.

There are 10 supplemental amendments for your consideration, and I'll briefly describe each one.

As you mentioned before, turning it over to the sponsor of the amendment.

So with that, we can get started.

Excellent.

Okay.

Well, let's do that.

And we can tee up each amendment on the screen.

Thanks again for your participation with central staff and drafting these amendments.

And Council Member Lewis, you are up first with amendment number one.

Would you like to move your amendment?

Yes.

Thank you, Council Member Muscata or Madam Chair Muscata.

I move amendment one.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded.

Council Member Lewis, would you like, excuse me, I'm gonna turn it to Central Staff first, and then I'll have the sponsor add to that.

Central Staff, would you like to summarize this amendment for us?

So Amendment 1 is sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

It would add $950,000 in the Office of Arts to provide a grant to the Seattle International Film Festival for a building purchase and to support SIFs programs and services.

This is a one-time request supported by admission tax revenue, which came in higher than expected and a public benefit package developed with input from the Seattle Film Commission would need to be negotiated for any agreement, any grant agreement is executed.

Thank you so much Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you so much, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm very proud to be bringing forward this amendment today in collaboration with Seattle International Film Festival, our arts community, our downtown community, and indeed today, leadership of the Film Commission joining us here in chambers.

As central staff discussed in queuing this up, the source of revenue to support this one-time grant comes from a larger than anticipated collection in 2022 of admissions tax, which as we know is dedicated to support arts purposes in the city of Seattle.

This is a really unique opportunity.

We have been without the Cinerama as a community for almost four years now.

when it closed down and was put into uncertainty due to the processing of the estate of the late Paul Allen, really want to lift up and appreciate the leadership of Vulcan in working with Seattle International Film Festival to make sure that this cultural icon of the city, you know, indeed an icon that is as associated with this city as the Space Needle and Pike Place Market, in many respects, is going to be in non-profit ownership going forward.

This opens a lot of possibilities for collaboration between the public and non-profit sectors.

This is not going to be a for-profit theater.

This is going to be a unique public center of film and cinema, the celebration of it, as well as advancing the art form and the workforce that that is essential to that industry.

The proposal is not merely to support this acquisition and operation to get the Cinerama open this fall instead of lingering into 2024, but also to support a public benefit package that compliments our efforts right now to reactivate the downtown neighborhood and to reinvigorate the film art sector, which has suffered so much during the COVID pandemic.

We heard in chambers today testimony from Tom Maher, executive director of CIFF, on the various potential public benefits that could be included, including workforce development, downtown activation, academic and community programming that could be hosted at the Cinerama site.

And we have also had interest from a meeting with the leadership of the Arts Commission on their interest in collaborating on shaping that public benefit package, which of course will occur post passage of this amendment in conversation with the Office of Arts and Culture, and definitely, as indicated earlier, appreciate the testimony of the leadership of the Film Commission today in support of this important amendment.

With that, I would open it up for additional comments from colleagues, but really appreciate the opportunity to have saved the Cinerama from a potential fate that could have led to its demolition or indeed repurposing to something other than the legacy film heritage of this important Seattle icon.

And really excited to support its next step in life as a venue for CIFF and also a forum for the public enjoyment of film in a way that it never has been in the past, or more than it has been in the past.

So with that, I will turn it back over to you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Excellent.

And congratulations on that effort.

We have 3 hands up.

I'm just going to ask folks to proactively confirm that they are good to stay on till noon.

And as we do, I'll turn over to council member Nelson.

Then we'll go herbal and Peterson Nelson.

I can stay till noon.

Thank you.

So thank you very much for bringing this forward.

I have spoken to leadership at CIFF about this and about the important need for this funding this year and what reopening of Cinerama will mean for the film community and for downtown.

And I should note that Beth Barrett, who is with CIFF, is also a member of the Film Commission.

And we heard from Kat Ogden earlier today, thank you for coming down.

So it's clear how important this is for film in general.

And the Cinerama is an iconic symbol of film in Seattle, much like CIFF itself.

And its reopening is another milestone toward bringing film back to Seattle that follows on the increased film incentives from the state, the opening of Harbor Island Studio, obviously the creation of the Film Commission.

So this is a critical step that we're taking.

And the Cinerama is really ground zero for film and also is super important for downtown recovery and increased foot traffic along that whole corridor.

In any case, this money will be spent this year to accelerate Cinerama's reopening.

And so that is really important to me.

Because while there are still bugs out there, as the chair noted at the top of the meeting, the future of our arts and cultural institutions depends on getting audiences back into theaters.

And this is the theater for film here we're talking about.

So I'm going to be supporting this amendment today.

I also want to acknowledge that there are many organizations within Seattle's film and creative economy that could use this money and we've received an email from the Northwest Film Forum making that case.

So if we're serious about funding creative nonprofits and arts organizations let's continue that momentum in future budgets to allow for the possibility that many organizations out there can receive funding for their important programs.

And that's going to be an ongoing discussion.

I've been immersed in the film industry conversation and become aware of how important that work is and how great the needs are.

So let's pass this today and continue that discussion for how we can continue to support our film industry in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, vice chair.

Thank you so much.

I just want to speak to some of the issues that I had originally had with this proposal and thank the chair for resolving them for me.

In part, it was very important to me that we hear from the Seattle Arts Commission to get their feedback Admissions tax comprises the majority of the Arts Office budget, and so this was really critical stakeholdering that Councilmember Lewis did in speaking to the Arts Commission.

Having a small part of assisting a former City Councilmember in the legislation that ensures that the majority of ad tax goes to the Arts Office.

understanding how much the Arts Office has suffered during the COVID pandemic, not receiving all of that ad tax for three years.

It was just really important that we hear directly from the Arts Commission.

I understand the Commission is supportive of this use.

They have been asked to be involved in negotiating the public benefits, as Councilmember Lewis mentioned.

I'm glad to understand that the Lewis office will be putting them in touch directly with SIF for that purpose.

And in particular, the commission requested that should ad tax revenue come in over budget this year or any year in the future, that they would like to be proactively involved in determining how that additional revenue is spent.

I hope that request will be accommodated.

And I do think it is sort of in the spirit of the original Lakata ordinance expanding ad tax revenue for the arts office.

The commission, as mentioned, did not object to this use for higher than anticipated tax revenue.

I will not object either.

public benefits package.

I see this queued up as part of the amendment.

Just want to flag that we know that distributing free tickets can be important as part of a public benefits package, but we do have sort of a lingering question about the redemption of those free tickets.

Some of the other cultural institutions that make free tickets available have begun tracking the redemption.

It's relatively low, and that means that the public benefit that the city is giving, actually getting, isn't as much as it's proposing to give.

So, we've heard about some early successes of, for instance, Bombershoot in their public public benefits agreement that is pretty inspirational around workforce development and apprenticeships.

And so that I think would be a good area to consider moving some of the public benefits work towards.

And again, I know the Seattle Arts Commission has lots of good ideas about that.

But in short, I will be supporting this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I want to thank all the people who wrote to City Council supporting this amendment and for the supporters who spoke here today.

We received a lot of emails, so compliments to how well organized the advocates have been for this proposal.

I support CIFF.

I want Cinerama to thrive.

I appreciate a district council member advocating strongly for the cultural and entertainment assets in their district, especially when it's centrally located downtown where everyone in the city can enjoy them, too.

I also appreciate Councilmember Herbold's comments, the additional context and due diligence in consulting the Seattle Arts Commission.

I do have a couple of questions, especially we just had a robust presentation from our City Council Central staff on how we can get more information on projects that we're awarding money to.

I want to just be sure I ask a couple of questions here and better understand this.

Paul Allen was a well-known technology billionaire, a dedicated fan of film.

I also know he made a lot of generous philanthropic contributions.

So I'm trying to understand why Paul Allen's estate would not simply give the Cinerama or a million dollars to the best operator, which could certainly be CIFF.

Do we know why they're not just giving the money?

It seems like they would have it.

I think it's a great question.

I also want to make sure that central staff has a chance to answer that as well, because I have some questions.

And my understanding is Jasmine Marwaha worked on this, but I'll turn it over to Ali and Eden to see if you have any additional thoughts about that.

Thank you, I, I don't have details on the financials of the cinema, because this is a bit of a different request than other.

You know, then, like, the aquarium example discussed previously, we were not given those information.

I do understand that the purchase price was significantly discounted.

I can't speak to why the state didn't provide.

at for free or provide additional resources to help make sure they could not just purchase the building or retain or obtain ownership of it, but also operate their programs out of it.

But perhaps the sponsor has more information.

Madam Chair, I'm happy to address Councilmember Peterson's question.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, you know, obviously, the real estate transaction is complicated, and I don't have all of the absolute details at my fingertips, in intricate detail, though I'm sure that SIF would be happy to make itself available to members that have additional questions.

I would just state that an estate does have a fiduciary obligation to the estate to guarantee a certain amount of capturing the full value of the assets that are part of that estate in the process of liquidating it, including cultural assets like the Cinerama.

My understanding, and there has been some media about this, so I don't think that I'm betraying any confidences by saying this, is that there was a significant negotiation between SIF and the Allen Estate that did result, as Deputy Director Panucci indicated, in a significantly reduced price that the estate did everything in its power to honor its obligations, its fiduciary obligations to the estate while also conveying this in a way that Paul Allen would have wanted to a caretaker to take on the legacy of the value that he placed on this institution and its role in Seattle's arts world fabric.

You know, that said, you know, SIF is a nonprofit.

You know, it's a medium-sized nonprofit, but nonetheless, it is not a large for-profit corporation.

This is a significant capital acquisition for a nonprofit of any size, and it's very ambitious of SIF, and we appreciate SIF's ambition in this respect.

to acquire this asset.

We have been working with King County, which has put up a match for the city's contribution.

So we are, on our end, with our fiduciary obligation, leveraging our partnership with another regional government to stretch the value of our potential support to secure public benefit and get the institution open.

But in addition to the capital support, my understanding is there are also operational constraints that CIFF is facing in getting a new theater up and running that this grant is designed to support.

So, I mean, I guess what I would say in response to Council Member Peterson's question is really appreciate the leadership of the Allen Estate in significantly reducing the acquisition cost relative to what it would have been for a purely profit-driven party or a developer that maybe would have the desire of liquidating the parcel and building something on it.

And, you know, this was an arrangement on the part of the Allen Estate to find an achievable price point that still maintained their fiduciary obligation to the estate.

But given that we're talking about nonprofits, it does still warrant, as is very common in our practice, some level of public support to get some of these enterprises over the finish line.

And this is a somewhat unique one.

It is a one-time, not an ongoing investment.

And it will secure certain unique benefits for the public that are enumerated in the amendment as possibilities and that we will work on with the department in question.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, did you have additional questions?

Yes, thank you.

So, I'm still, it would still be nice if the, Paul Allen's family estate would simply give the Cinerama to the best operator, which is likely SIF, or a million dollars to them, rather than our tax, than these tax dollars, but I realize they are dedicated to this type of use.

When we are allocating tax dollars to nonprofits, typically we do a request for proposals, but this would be making a direct award to a single organization for that single location.

Are we not doing an RFP because CIF has already been involved with Paul Allen Estate on this transaction.

And I'll ask my third question, too.

Has King County Council approved the million dollars yet, or is it just a commitment from their executive at this point?

And I don't see Central, oh, go ahead, Central.

I need to double check.

I did see it in a mid-year budget proposal, but I don't have the updated information if they have actually passed that proposal or not.

I will follow up after committee.

In terms of the RFP question, this is requesting that the executive just award and work with SIF on the public benefits package, but there would be future Implementation steps that need to be followed and they, you know, if they were determined a different path may come back to council to ask for a different authority.

Madam chair point of order.

Okay.

or point of information is actually more I think what I'm inquiring about.

Given that this is a committee and that some of these questions might be best responded to by the executive director of SIF, might be appropriate to suspend the rules to allow director Mara to address some of council member Peterson's questions where he may have some more updated information than I do.

Uh, no, I don't think we're going to do that today.

I think that we should get all the questions out there and then would encourage the parties to send follow up information to the colleagues here on on the committee and it would be helpful, I think, to the full council as well.

But thank you for the suggestion.

And for director Mara, please do feel free to send us follow up information as we move forward here.

Thanks for asking that council member Peterson.

Did you have additional questions?

Thank you for making time and space for my questions, Chair Mosqueda.

I just don't have the information today to get to a yes on this, so I'll just be abstaining on this one.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks so much.

I appreciate where council member Lewis was coming from and all of the good folks that it sounds like are still there and ready to provide additional information.

So we'll look forward to that follow up information.

I'm just conscious of time here.

I will note that if we're not able to get through all of the amendments by noon, I could try to kick this over to our August 10th meeting, but let's see if we can get through as many as possible.

And perhaps we all will surprise each other and getting through the rest of these.

All right, great.

I hear some chuckles, so I will also note the appreciation for additional information to come.

I'm sorry that we don't have the opportunity to provide additional time at the at the table if you will, for that kind of discussion here today.

But this is this is a, this is an important policy question that has been teed up from our.

Our colleague here I appreciate that there's some information provided, but I do also have a handful of questions as well, so just want to.

See if before I get into my questions if there's any other questions from my colleagues.

Okay, and council member Lewis, thanks for fielding some of those questions as well as our team from central staff for me.

I think that there are a number of things that I would like to see regarding this amendment.

Number 1, I want to express my support for.

the interest in helping to acquire the Cinemarama Theater.

I very much appreciate that this, as the good sponsor noted, is being put into non-profit hands, not sold on the private market, preserving what is a community asset.

Love going to the Cinemarama myself.

Our family goes there often, pre-baby more so than now, but one day we will get back out there.

I appreciate it and I also have to be really conscious of some of the similar questions that Council Member Peterson was asking about given the large amount of admission tax revenue that is being allocated without having a chance to discuss this more in depth with the Art Commission and other stakeholders, specifically other stakeholders, including members of the labor community.

I'm very interested in ensuring that a public benefit agreement is specific to labor harmony and labor harmony agreements are commonplace.

when we think about the partnership we've had with the waterfront, or I think another great example was the partnership that we had with Memorial Stadium, which the sponsors are very familiar with as the chair of that committee.

I would be very interested in replicating language from the Memorial Stadium discussion that we had to ensure that our labor partners who are part of the cohort that council member, Um, herbal and I believe council member Nelson spoke to in terms of the community of workers and the community that is within arts and cultures within arts and culture, having a direct benefit from this.

The language is a little bit.

You know, um.

Uh, open to what could be included in a public benefits agreement, including, but not limited to jobs created and maintain.

But I'd really like there to be a directive around seeing labor harmony language included similar to what we've done when other public dollars have been associated.

with investments in nonprofits or public-private partnerships.

So very supportive of the effort to make sure SIF has the support necessary to move forward.

Similar questions around why now and the dollar amount that we're talking about, why it has to be done this year.

Happy to have the additional language shared with us afterwards.

But unless there is a response to specifically including labor harmony in a more direct way in the public benefit language, I am going to be a no on this item today with the desire and acknowledgement that I would like for this to get to a place that includes labor harmony before final passage.

Given that that's probably less of a question for central staff and maybe more of a question for the sponsor.

Council Member Lewis, do you have any thoughts or interests in partnering together to include labor harmony language in this public benefits directive before final passage?

I have no objection to adding labor harmony language.

I mean, if we, if the Madam Chair has language handy, I would accept it as a friendly amendment, given that we have three colleagues in favor, one abstaining in front of us, I'd like to resolve this business at today's meeting.

But obviously, you know, labor harmony should follow public money.

That's a principle that I believe very strongly in.

So if Madam Chair does have that language handy, I don't have any objection to including it.

I also don't have an objection to including it as a subsequent amendment when we consider this bill at full council.

Great, well, I want to offer something for central staff, recognizing I am not a central staff member and would like to honor what the sponsor has noted here today.

My suggestion, if there is agreement from the chair, is that instead of saying the public benefit package could include, it should say shall include, but not limited to, and it should say under A, a labor harmony agreement, jobs created, and jobs created and maintained.

If you are obliged to work with me here as we do this verbally, I would appreciate it.

Council Member, I might need you to say that again.

I also want to note that we need to have this reviewed by law to ensure that all of that language works.

I think part of it is that the reason it said it could include is that this public benefits package has to be negotiated and it would be included in the grant agreement when the city is actually issuing the funds.

I don't know, it is intentionally could include, but I don't know that for a $950,000 investment, that necessarily all of these things, Like how it depends on sort of the details and how it's developed and quantified and that sort of thing.

And so if you'd like to make that oral amendment, we can try to do it on the fly.

I will just flag that before council takes final action.

We'll need to make sure that the language is reviewed by the city attorney's office.

Madam chair.

Yes, Mr. Council Member Lewis.

Just a question for Deputy Director Panucci.

The most recent example that we have of a similar conversation like this is with Friends of the Waterfront over some of the waterfront legislation that we considered earlier this summer.

That was more of an exercise in us providing oversight of the department and the nonprofit while they sought a labor harmony agreement between the parties.

And I don't think our legislation necessary, now that I'm kind of thinking about this, because we're discussing this with central staff, I don't know that our legislation necessarily explicitly enumerated a labor harmony agreement given that a nonprofit and not a department was the, but can you maybe remind me, is it an analogous situation, do you think, Ali, or is this somehow a little bit different?

I can't say that I am super familiar with the legislation that you're referring to or off the top of my head, and I probably was trying to do too many things at one time.

I think it may be similar.

I will say that there are other instances where the council has included language related to labor harmony agreements when contracting with other organizations in the housing space, and I believe also in the education, The family is education and early learning or not that's not the right one promise preschool and promise levy.

There's labor harmony references to labor harmony requirements when contracting for services.

I just don't have all of that information in front of me right now.

And so I can't, I can't tell you it's exactly apples to apples, but there are other examples of the council having.

included this type of language related to contracting with non-profits.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Did you have something teed up that you were wanting to share with us to accomplish the stated goals here?

Me?

Eden.

Oh.

Okay.

Council Member Lewis, did you have any?

Eden, did you have something you wanted to share?

I'm sorry.

Eden, are you trying to get in on the conversation here?

I don't know how he's driving.

I think she's trying to.

Change, add the language that chairman was asking for.

On the fly looks like right now.

Yeah, but if you captured it already and have a document, I can give you, I do not have that document now, but I'm just going to stop sharing for a minute to pull up the Word document and then we can edit.

Did you have something you were trying to say?

I just think given the agenda in front of us and a lot of other matters to discuss, my stated preference would be that we vote on the amendment as it stands with the intent to have a supplementary amendment related to labor harmony that we can vet with the law department.

I don't think there's disagreement from stakeholders on wanting to come up with the appropriate language, and I don't want us to accidentally put some language in on the fly that doesn't reconcile with what it should be.

So I think the cleanest thing for our agenda would be to call the question on this amendment, and then my office will work with your office and central staff and the law department and SIF to come up with the appropriate labor harmony language for a full council or a subsequent committee meeting.

And that would be my stated preference on proceeding, and I just wanna put that out there.

Excellent, thank you so much for your openness to do that.

The question has been called.

We will go ahead and consider this wrapped up unless there's any additional conversation on agenda.

I am amendment number 1 again.

I will be signaling a no vote today.

Just wanting to make sure that that labor harmony language gets included.

I also want to ensure that we have.

really thought through the other implications of doing this now versus in the fall budget.

Council member noted that there was an urgency to do so, so I look forward to learning more.

I think there will be follow-up language sent around based on all the questions asked.

I appreciate the willingness to work with central staff and come up with an amendment here today.

and we will kick that over to a follow-up discussion with central staff and the partners involved.

Okay, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on amendment number one?

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

Abstain.

Councilmember Nelson?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

No.

Madam Chair, that is three in favor, one abstain, and one no.

Thank you so much.

The motion carries, and amendment number one is included with the hope for follow-up amendments to come to it.

Congratulations, Council Member Lewis.

Amendment number two, please go ahead, Central Staff.

Oh, excuse me.

I move amendment number two be adopted.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

It has been moved and seconded.

Central Staff, would you like to speak to this item?

Yes, I'll quickly do an introduction.

So amendment 2 is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, and it would reduce the Jumpstart transfer to the general fund by $34M.

The 23-24 Use of Funds Flexibility Ordinance provides for temporary support from Jumpstart to the general fund to balance the general fund due to Continuing revenue shortfalls, the 2022 ending general fund balance came in at 34Million dollars.

And so this amendment would reduce the 2023 transfer by that amount.

Thank you so much colleagues.

I want to describe this very briefly due to the continuing revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic.

The 2023 adopted general fund budget relies on the temporary support of the jumpstart higher than anticipated fund to help balance this year's budget and next year's budget.

We talked about that in detail over the last year and a half here.

Ordinance 126719, which provides for the temporary backfill in the 2023 budget, requires that the transfer be reduced by the amount of any 2022 general fund ending balances.

Less encumbrances carry forwards as authorized by ordinance or state law and planned reserve amounts reflected in the 2023 or 2024 adopted budget.

That is more than the latest Revised estimate of the unreserved ending fund balance for 2022. So, based on the 2022 year end activity, the excess general fund balance amount is 33. million, $996,509.

This amendment reduces the 2023 transfer from Jumpstart Fund to the General Fund by that specific amount.

I've asked central staff to draft legislation to help us amend the fund policies to ensure that there's clarity, that moving forward at a minimum, the 2020 estimates from the Jumpstart categories, that was unanimously passed in the spend plan and inflated annually.

Is understood as so we can continue to make these adjustments going forward.

Any additional questions, how would you add anything or would you add anything to that?

I would just note that in the April revenue forecast that the city received and was approved by the forecast council jumpstart, the estimated revenues for the jumpstart fund or lower than assumed in the November budget and higher than assumed for for general fund.

And so this reflects both complying with the fund flexibility ordinance, but it is also what is the current assumptions for the city budget office of how to keep the jumpstart fund in balance for 2023. so it is. in many ways, a technical amendment to reflect current law and the current operating assumptions to keep 23 in balance for both the General Fund and Jump Start Fund.

You're on mute, Chair.

Any additional comments?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment Number 2?

Madam Chair, Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor.

Now we're cooking.

Amendment number two is unanimously passed and it will be adopted.

Amendment number three, please.

This is an amendment from Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to move your amendment?

Yes, I move amendment three.

I'll 2nd, it it's been moved and 2nd, and customer herbal 1 2nd, I'm going to turn to central stuff and then I'll turn it to you.

So, I'm in the 3 sponsored by council member herbals would add 1Million dollars of general fund in human services department to support medication for opioid use disorder treatment program.

The funding would be used to contract with the Evergreen Treatment Services to help expand the treatment and motion program to Pioneer Square.

Funding for this amendment is available due to 2022 contracted expenditures in addressing homelessness.

Budget summary level coming in lower than expected, so that funding is not needed for the originally intended purpose.

And I would just like to quickly note that we corrected the title in the table since it was distributed yesterday morning.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, appreciate that Eden.

So as Eden explained, this amendment uses $1 million in underspend from the Human Services Department.

Treatment in Motion is a licensed mobile dispensary, mobile medication unit, provides medication for opioid use disorder.

The medication includes methadone, Buprenorphine, and the long-acting injectable sublocade.

The staff at Treatment in Motion provide field intakes, medical evaluations, dose evaluations, counseling, and community and patient outreach.

They launched in May with grant funding.

from Public Health PDA and a retrofitted van from King County.

They're currently serving 30 to 40 people each day at first in Blanchard with a capacity to serve approximately 100 to 120 people each day.

The executive request includes that Treatment in motion at a second Seattle site in Pioneer Square with the same 100-person day capacity.

The Pioneer Square site would allow Evergreen Treatment Services to expand the number of people who receive services from the treatment in motion van and lower barriers for people to access medical care in Pioneer Square.

ETS, Evergreen Treatment Services, is very interested in serving Pioneer Square.

Again, Treatment in Motion is currently operating at a deficit for which it is seeking additional grant funding and also pursuing an increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates from the healthcare authority to cover full costs of administering the model.

It believes that the efforts to do so are promising but not immediate.

The city offering this one-time funding would help cover their current operating gap of this funding.

I think 250,000 is to do so.

The vast majority of the funds are one-time funds for one-time purposes.

And we have explained to ETS that covering the operating gap does not mean that, because we are using one-time funds, does not mean that the city will continue to do so.

ETS can guarantee that the treatment and motion services would remain in Seattle with today's vote, including adding the new Pioneer Square site, again, serving 100 to 120 Seattle residents a day.

Without that bridge funding from Seattle, they would likely seek funding from a different jurisdiction, with the result being fewer service days per week within the city and no Pioneer Square service site.

The proposal to the city also includes a purchase of a used ADA transport van and hiring a driver which would allow them to circulate to hot spots.

and pick up patients to deliver them.

This would ensure that the capacity for service is maximized each day and further lower barriers to treatment.

Finally, Evergreen Treatment Services would like to purchase a second MMU, which would have double the capacity and would allow them to serve an additional estimated 200 to 240 patients daily and expand to two additional locations.

So, with the purchase of this second MMU, their total capacity would increase to serve four total locations and 300 to 360 patients daily.

Again, these services are partially reimbursable by Medicaid, and the figures included in the amendment assume a conservative amount of Medicaid reimbursement.

Mobile medication units are a new model, and the guidelines for these services have been approved.

As with most new programs, the Medicaid reimbursements model is currently insufficient.

This problem with reimbursement has been acknowledged by the state healthcare authority, which recently made awards to stand up new MMUs and included in those awards a significant amount of operating support funding for the first two years.

So again, we are confident that the guidelines for Medicaid reimbursements are going to be improved.

ETS is in conversation with other organizations operating about the structural rate gap that we mentioned and together they are going to be bringing their concerns to the healthcare authority this fall.

They are optimistic and I think they are optimistic with good reason that the new rates will be in place by the middle of next year.

Finally, ETS will have an opportunity to request a third year of funding from the Public Health PDA to help with operating expenses next year, and they're looking actively for additional grant sources.

So, this is all to address any concerns that folks have with an ongoing operating gap.

ETS has assured my office that they can scale their plans to the 1 million dollars in one-time funding available via this amendment and they intend to use it for Keeping the mobile medication unit services within the city serving three more locations again Pioneer Square two others to BD and maximizing their service capacity the potential and ability to serve and up to 300 to 360 patients daily by adding a second MMU and ADA transport van.

That's all I've got.

Thank you.

That is a great summary.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

So here's where I'm coming from on a lot of these amendments.

I basically don't like appropriating money for things we haven't had a policy discussion about.

And that's because, to my knowledge, and I admit I'm new, that's not what a mid-year supplemental budget is for.

So what is it for?

Well, on page two of the central staff memo, footnote one says that the RCW allows appropriating from the emergency fund or other designated funds an amount sufficient to meet the actual necessary expenditures of the city for which insufficient or no appropriations have been made due to causes which could not reasonably have been foreseen at the time of the making of the budget.

So if appropriations don't meet that, they should, I believe, they belong in the end of the year budget after a public discussion about the underlying policy can be had and the pros and cons can be discussed.

Appropriations do belong in the mid-year supplemental if they will be spent this year and the SIF appropriation does meet this standard and or in a situation where we have the money for something that's already been publicly vetted and it will go away if we don't appropriate and spend it this year.

And this particular item, this amendment, does concern a policy area that I care deeply about, substance use disorder treatment, but it's not clear that the amendment meets those standards.

And so I'll be voting no because I have too many other questions, first of which is that I was reading this amendment in the memo and we got an email at 854 that says that it will fund something else.

Some of my questions include, why does this have to be in the mid-year supplemental and not in the year-end budget?

This seems like a capital project, so it will likely not be spent this year.

However, that might be different, as Councilmember Herbold just said.

If it's self-balancing because it's just moving money from one BCL to another, that can be done in the fall.

How does this relate to the $27 million investment toward innovative facilities and treatment programs to address addiction that the mayor announced on Monday?

If the mayor supports it, why wasn't it included in the mid-year supplemental that he proposed?

And then finally, and very importantly, is this going to create an ongoing need in terms of funding for operations, and what's the plan to meet that need given our budget shortfall?

And I heard you say, Council Member Herbold, the vast majority of funds will be spent on one-time costs, but what about the rest?

So I will be voting no.

I know that we're in a time crunch.

It's 1152, so I don't expect for these questions to be answered.

Madam Chair, if I could very briefly address.

Yes, you're welcome to and I did just want to ask folks if you'd like to continue the conversation.

I'm available until our good chair of public assets has a meeting this afternoon, but I'm good to stay till 1230 if other folks are and please do go ahead and answer some of those questions as the sponsor.

So, this need is a need that has been identified by the executive.

It is a need that will be referenced in a coming executive order from the executive.

We are in a public health emergency associated with substance use disorder.

And these funds would allow them to purchase the van immediately.

It does take five months to outfit and accept delivery of the van.

And so that is the vast majority of the costs associated with this amendment are the one-time costs.

$750,000 are one-time costs, and I did address the issue regarding the ongoing costs.

So, about $250,000 are ongoing costs.

I did address that issue in describing the Medicaid reimbursement rates.

the grants that are being applied for and are sharing with Evergreen Treatment Services that we are not committing to further, this is one-time funds, which means we are not in any way indicating a commitment to further pay for ongoing operating costs.

Okay, thank you so much.

I am going to go ahead and call the question here.

I appreciate the council member herbal.

Your explanation here would just say, I very much support the efforts and appreciate the work you've done to identify funding and the 1 time nature of this.

So I will be supportive of this.

Adam clerk, could you please call the role on the adoption of amendment number 3?

Councilmember Herbold.

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson.

Yes.

Councilmember Nelson.

Abstain.

Councilmember Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair that is a four in favor, one abstain.

Great is there excuse me, the motion carries and amendment number 3 is adopted.

Is there.

Can I can I get a general sense of if there is willingness to stay till 1230?

I want to be respectful of your time.

I've already asked you to extend it to noon.

We can push the rest of the discussion off to next Thursday.

If you prefer.

If there's the ability to stay another 35 minutes, I would welcome that.

I have a conflict, I'm sorry.

I could stay.

Okay.

Okay.

Others?

I'm able to stay.

Okay.

I would prefer not to, but I can stay.

Okay.

Councilmember Nelson, were you saying something else?

I need to do some checking here because anyway.

Okay, let's let you do the checking as we go ahead.

Yeah, five minutes.

I love that.

Okay, let's be efficient here.

Let's go on agenda item number four.

And we'll let you do the checking and I'll circle back with you Council Member Nelson.

Thanks for doing that.

All right, excuse me, amendment number four.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to move this amendment?

Yes, I move amendment four.

Great, it's been moved.

Is there a 2nd?

2nd, thank you very much central staff.

Would you like to speak to this amendment for sponsored by council member Lewis?

This amendment would add 200,000 and HSD for contracting with community based organizations that support pre filing the diversion while reducing finance general reserve.

for the federal monitor by that same amount.

The monitor reserves are funded in excess of expected expenditure for 2023 and central staff determined there is a sufficient balance to absorb the 200,000 that is repurposed in this amendment.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

So this amendment does come on the heels of a very productive policy discussion that the Council had in Councilmember Herbold's committee, I believe, two weeks ago now.

This discussion around the expansion of the Seattle City Attorney's Office of pre-filed diversion programming to include several more providers catering to a population over 25 years of age, which has been a longstanding council objective in this area.

City Attorney's Office indicated in that meeting that this work is iterative and that they are seeking to continue to build and expand capacity in this area to take on a larger number of referrals to pre-file diversion and to expand the diversity of their diversion partners that they work with through this process.

And we did get a briefing on the offerings of several of those new partnerships including Uplift Northwest and the Urban League among others.

This investment would roughly equate to an additional 200 diversion slots in a given year.

Given the pivoting of the city attorney's office toward wanting to resolve a higher volume of cases through pre-file diversion than through the municipal court, This is a prudent investment to continue that work and to keep in mind the economy of the court as we work to develop a successor therapeutic court to community court, for example, and reduce the caseload of what ultimately gets to the court and try to resolve more of these interventions in the community.

The policy conversation was encouraging in the contracts and the arrangements that have been made with some trusted and very well-respected community organizations that are doing great work.

I think there's a lot of work for people to seek justice in different ways than the traditional criminal legal system.

And from my understanding of talking to council central staff, and there is going to be another amendment, I believe, amendment five, brought by council member Herbold, that also looks at the monitor reserve underspend.

It has been determined that those costs can be absorbed and we can still honor our commitments to the monitoring team.

I would just put on the record now, and I can't speak for Council Member Herbold and her amendment five, but to a certain extent, I would consider this to be a provisional investment in the supplemental budget that I would be interested in revisiting if there were emergent or new needs for the monitoring team.

So I do just want to put that on the record that if it does turn out, for example, that there is subsequent monitoring work that Judge Robart is requesting and this $200,000 would be necessary for that purpose, I would be willing to revisit that in the fall process if that should be a need.

And I just want to make that clear and put that on the record.

As it stands right now, my understanding is we do not anticipate a need like that, and that these resources are underspent and could be moved to other more exigent needs like providing interventions for folks who are cycling through the criminal legal system, which is what this amendment is focused on.

So with that, I don't have any additional comments, Madam Chair, and I will hand it back over to you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Nelson.

That was an old hand.

Oh, great.

We'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

I just wanted to say I'm pleased that you, Councilmember Lewis, are bringing this forward.

That was exactly the question of expanding access and resources for pre-filing diversion was exactly the purpose of the briefing in my committee.

Last week, I really wanted to highlight both the number of people the city attorney was anticipating being able to serve with the current contracts which was 300 and the agencies that were doing the service provision so that we could have a conversation of whether or not there was a need for additional slots and also the question of whether or not the slots associated with the different service organizations, whether or not that really corresponded with the needs of people.

being offered pretrial diversion services.

And so I did see that only one of the agencies that we learned about was really aligned to help people in substance use disorder cases and just really hope that this particular expansion would Maybe augment those particular needs but recognize the the desire and interest for flexibility at this time But I am very supportive of this.

Thank you Excellent, thank you councilmember peterson

Thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, I definitely support increasing funds for diversion.

I'm unable to support this amendment today because it seems premature to be reallocating funds away from the police accountability monitor before the end of the fiscal year and before the federal judge makes his final determinations.

I would think the court monitor might share this concern as well, but I'm open to revisiting this during our fall budget process when we have more information.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Okay, great.

Well, I also will be supporting this here today.

I think, you know, evidence shows that will pre arrest diversion is the gold standard for preventing further harm and engagement with the criminal legal system.

Pre filing diversion is still preferred to pre trial diversion because it enables.

People to avoid further entanglement in the criminal legal system without a case ever being initiated with which that initiation.

We know that initiation alone can be a stumbling block for many folks getting into the criminal legal system.

So I'm going to be supporting yet supporting this.

I would love to know more and council member.

Louis as the sponsor of this, if you could follow up to let us know if you already have these details, I'm just interested in which community based organizations might receive the funding.

Is it enough funding?

Do we know if there might be a need for future funding?

And thank you for the work that you've done on the broader concept around this.

Um, look forward to hearing more about the executives focus as well on pre arrest aversion in executive order related to the drug, public use and possession ordinance, which I continue to look into.

So, thank you so much for sharing this today and I will be supporting this amendment.

Any additional comments?

No, I'm happy to vote.

Thank you.

Great.

Let's go ahead and do that.

Madam clerk.

Can you please call the role?

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

No.

Councilmember Nelson?

Abstain.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Hi, I'm sure that is a 3 in favor 1 oppose and 1 abstain.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

The emotion carries and amendment number 4 is adopted colleagues.

I have received notification from our colleagues here on the finance committee that you have freed up the next half an hour.

So, let's go through the rest of these.

I think we only have about 5 more left.

So, let's endeavor to keep our comments relatively short and we can get through this process today.

That'd be fantastic.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to move Amendment Number 5?

Thank you so much.

I do.

I move Amendment Number 5.

Wonderful.

Is there a second?

I will second it.

It's been moved and seconded, Council Member Herbold.

After Central Staff speaks, you're welcome to.

Central Staff, please go ahead.

Amendment Number 5, sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

This amendment would add 49,000 general fund and a half-time communications and engagement specialist position in support of the assumption of duties currently conducted by the Federal Monitor under the Consent Decree.

The position would allow the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to comply with requirements in the areas of community engagements, bias and disparities, and communications.

And same as the prior amendment, it would be funded with excess Federal Monitor reserves, which are held in Finance General.

Thank you so much.

So in this instance, though this is also repurposing.

overspend or underspend from the monitoring project, this actually, this work is aligned with the consent decree because OIG is transitioned to take on work that has previously been conducted by the consent decree monitor.

And some of that involves policy work.

So, in short, given the breadth and scope of the work with which The OIG is charged, and the new addition of this new body of monitoring work under the consent decree, there remain staffing deficiencies and potential resource needs.

Most concerning is OIG's ability to comply with the requirements in the area of community engagement, bias, and disparities.

and communications in support of the assumption of duties currently conducted by the Federal Monitor.

This $49,000 will assist with the addition of a half-time FTE communications and community engagement position.

As we know, communicating the OIG's work is very imperative to transparency, building community trust, and legitimacy.

This includes employing racial equity expertise to guide the OIG management in the scoping of work projects, as well as helping OIG effectively report progress and status of the mandated work and to interface with community in a manner that sets aside institutional assumptions and have legitimate, effective community engagement.

OIG closely examined its 2023 budget and reduced the potential amount of this ad.

I really appreciate that, and I urge my colleagues to support this.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

I, too, will be supporting this.

Thank you for increasing the capacity for community engagement in this effort.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of Amendment No. 5?

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

Abstain.

Councilmember Nelson?

Abstain.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair that is three in favor to abstain.

Thank you colleagues the amendment the motion passes and the amendment will be adopted.

Okay we're going to move on to amendments number 6A and 6B and I'll turn it excuse me let me just move amendment 6A first as the sponsor of this amendment I move adoption of amendment 6A.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded.

I'm going to turn over to central staff and then I'll speak very briefly to this.

So, amendment 6 has 3 options and all are related to the funding for the living hotels ordinance.

Amendment 6 option 8 sponsored by the chair would redirect 50,000 dollars general fund from office of sustainability and environment to Seattle Department of construction inspections to support costs related to developing a living hotels ordinance.

amendment six option be sponsored by council member Nelson would reduce that proposed $50,000 from OSC, which was included as a pre intro change to the supplemental bill, and is a mutually exclusive amendment to six a.

And lastly, six.

be version 2 sponsored by Councilmember Nelson would reduce $50,000 from SDCI and this amendment would only be considered if amendment 6A is approved by the committee.

Thank you so much.

I'll speak briefly to this and then I'll call on Councilmember Nelson who has the other two amendments and the first hand up.

College is very briefly and not to go into all the details because we spent quite a bit of time on this in the last committee and given our time restraints, I'll be very brief.

I want to thank the office of sustainability environment, the Department of construction and inspections, the mayor's office for the really productive conversations we've had over the last 2 weeks on how to make this proposal align more with the process and analysis that they are beginning to embark on and what they think might be possible.

Based on the conversations that we've had with the mayor's office, and excuse me, department of construction and inspection.

I am now proposing to direct the 50,000 dollars included in the supplemental to instead of.

Because of the discussions we've had with, they are already conducting a review of the living building pilot program that is already on the books.

And they have confirmed that they have the technical capacity to conduct any work needed.

That department is really the right fit for this funding.

So, thanks to my colleagues, including council member Nelson, who was raising questions about the placement of this, but recognizing this work will be done in close consultation with given the environmental impacts and other city departments, including our utilities.

We wanted to ensure that the funding still followed those departments.

My intent is to ensure that they have the funding necessary to do stakeholder engagement, any additional staff capacity across departments and to work with a wide variety of stakeholders as they further consider this assessment.

Again, this is funding to support an analysis of the review for any future work and not directing any policy via the budget.

Thank you for the letter that was sent.

You all have received a copy of that letter on the concept of a living hotel concept in your inbox as of this morning.

Council Member Nelson.

Yeah, I have some questions and comments about the base expenditure, but I do want to register my disagreement that this is mutually exclusive with my amendment because Yours is talking about where does the money go.

Mine talks about whether or not we should spend it.

So I would like Ali to address the mechanics of this decision-making process right now.

Thank you.

Deputy director, please feel free to describe that.

I think that if amendment 6A were to hang, then it is appropriate to consider 6B version 2, which would then strip the funding.

So those two I don't see as mutually exclusive.

I see them sequenced.

Thank you.

Chair Mosqueda, Councilmember Nelson.

Labeled 6A and 6B version was mutually exclusive because they are one would redirect the funds and one would cut the fund so it gets redirected to Seattle SDCI.

there would no longer be anything in the bill appropriating the 50,000 to OSC.

As originally drafted and before you had all the amendments in front of you, the 6A and 6B version 1 are mutually exclusive from my perspective.

But procedurally, that's why we offered version 2 of your amendment.

If 6A passes, you could then move 6B version 2, which is not a mutually exclusive.

option as the chair described.

Thank you.

Additional comments?

Well, I'll just say that it does make more sense to go to SDCI because they administer the Living Building Pilot Incentive Program right now.

And this, and that is something, that's a program that I support fully.

I staffed the text amendment that allowed for the construction of Stone 34, which was a living building where Brooks Running Shoes is right now.

So this does make more sense.

But if this passes, it is my understanding that we will still hear my amendment.

Is that correct?

Correct.

If this passes 6A, we would then consider amendment 6B version 2.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Great example.

Thank you for calling out the Brooks store and that building there.

And I would like to attach to the materials, the letter that I circulated as well.

So we'll make that part of the materials for the viewing public as well.

If I was there in person, I'd be holding it up.

Any additional comments?

I'll speak a bit.

Oh, please go ahead.

I do have a comment on what you said in your introductory.

You mentioned conversations with the executive, but it is not clear to me that the mayor supports this program.

So can you clarify?

Because my understanding from the original amendment was that there was not a commitment that OSC would take on this work.

And so is there, Does the mayor support this program and SDCI doing it?

Well, I cannot speak on the specific recommendation from the mayor.

I know that there's ongoing conversations.

I will say that from our discussions with OSC, Department of Construction, and representatives from the mayor's office, there were very productive conversations about the alignment with existing analysis of the Living Building Pilot Program.

As you mentioned, it currently is housed at SCCI, and there is a review that is being planned there conducting A review of that pilot program right now, technical capacity on whether or not that they could do this is is is better suited at, but doing so in partnership with these other departments, which have not historically been involved is something that we're interested in supporting with funding.

My understanding is that there's conversations coming up this week directly with the mayor.

So I don't want to.

presuppose or predetermine what the outcomes of those would be, but very productive discussions with the department.

And again, as a legislative branch, this is our opportunity to indicate our directive and intention to work with the departments, but really further policy priorities.

So I will continue to recommend a yes vote on this and look forward to those future conversations that have been very productive thus far.

Any additional comments?

Okay, seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 6A?

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

No.

Councilmember Nelson?

No.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Madame Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madame Chair, that is three in favor, two opposed.

Thank you very much.

The amendment is adopted, and Amendment 6A will be included.

That brings us to Amendment 6B, Version 1. Council Member Nelson, would you like to move your amendment?

I move Amendment 6B, Version 1.

So sorry, Council Member Nelson.

Oh, it has been seconded.

I do see a hand from Central Staff.

Yeah.

Just a point of clarification, I think you need to move 6B version 2. 6A is now off the table because the money is now in SDCI.

And so you'll want to move version 2.

Did I say the wrong thing?

Apologies.

6B version 2. Council Member Nelson, did you move that?

I moved that.

Second.

Thank you.

And I'll be here a second.

Thank you.

Amendment 6B version 2 is in front of us.

Central staff, do you have any additional content that you'd like to share with us?

No additional content.

So hey, Councilmember Nelson, would you like to speak to this amendment?

Yeah, as I mentioned in the committee discussion last time, there has been no public discussion of this of the Living Hotels policy idea.

It's being spoken of as akin to the Living Buildings program.

That's an incentive program.

It's also been sort of mentioned in relation to the building performance standards legislation that is for existing buildings and so And this is being promoted by a coalition, but led by Unite Here, which is a labor program.

So there is still a lot of questions that have not been vetted in either of the relevant policy committees.

That would be either sustainability and renters' rights or land use.

And so it really seems as though this is, we're being asked to spend money on environmental review for something that we don't even know what it is.

And that is not good practice.

Our constituents expect us to be good shepherds of money.

And here we are putting the cart before the horse on a program that, again, we have not discussed.

I am not signaling that I, I oppose living hotels.

I am simply saying that we still need to discuss this in committee.

I don't know where the executives at on this.

This is $50,000 to go toward environmental review.

We just talked about, you just mentioned that SDCI has the resources to do this.

And so I have a question about, OK, so will this pay for a consultant to do that environmental review?

that's subcontracted by SDCI.

So again, this is a policy discussion that is yet to be had, and I don't think that we should be spending money on environmental review on something that we don't even know what it is.

Thank you so much.

I'll just speak very briefly and I'll look for additional hands.

I want to clarify.

I did not use the word resources.

The word I use was technical capacity.

So they, they have more of the knowledge, the skills, the expertise inside for this type of a review.

They are conducting a review of the living building program right now.

So it would be.

Funding the ability to do an assessment of whether or not an extension or application of a similar project to hotels for a living hotels.

Policy that may be developed in the future, whatever come to fruition.

This is the initial policy concepts that we would be supporting through the department to have an initial conversation that would ultimately come to counsel and counsel would have the final decision on whether or not to advance new policy.

Is there a new hand?

Well, if we already have the living building program, why is this?

I mean, the question that I have that we don't have time to answer is, this is needed, why?

So anyway, go on.

Okay, well, thank you so much.

I think that the, the letter and some of the comments speak to it, the interest in having the environmental assessment of new buildings, hotels, specifically being high energy using buildings be assessed.

And if there's a new standard, if we want to call it something like.

Seattle, healthy building, healthy hotel buildings or something like that in the future.

This is a very initial analysis.

So much more work to be done with the stakeholders.

This would be funding the departments to work in partnership to do that assessment and no policy would go forward without coming back to council.

I'm in support of keeping the funding there.

I just want to reduce any barriers that the department has and appreciate that the technical capacity is there, but want to support them with the resources to do stakeholder engagement and any sort of analysis needed to give us the council a fuller picture of what policy options we might want to consider.

Adam clerk, could you please call the role on the adoption of amendment 6. The version 2. And again, I will be voting no on this.

Councilmember Herbold?

No.

Councilmember Peterson?

Yes.

Councilmember Nelson?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

No.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

No.

Madam Chair, that is two in favor, three no.

Thank you very much.

The amendment does not pass and we will move on to amendment number seven.

Council Member Peterson, as the sponsor, would you like to move this amendment?

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, colleagues, I move amendment number seven to the council bill.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Central staff, could you please describe?

So amendment 7 sponsored by council member Peterson would transfer $500,000 of school safety traffic and pedestrian improvement fund from SPD to start or implementation of additional schools on cameras.

The 23 budget adopted budget added 1Million dollars in SPD schools on camera program to double the number of cameras.

And so this transferred would allow to evaluate potential camera locations and design installations.

Excellent Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, this amendment will better sequence the funding to achieve the council's direction given to the executive last fall to double the school zone traffic safety camera enforcement program.

As we know, currently only about 20% of Seattle Public Schools benefit from this traffic safety program.

That ends up paying for itself once it's in place.

To achieve our goal to double this important safety program, last fall a council allocated to the executive $1 million in 2023. And that's a budget authority.

And the school zone safety program, though, is operated by two departments, Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Police Department.

So all of the funding for this year, 2023, was originally placed in the School Safety Traffic and Pedestrian Improvement Fund, which is managed through our Seattle Police Department.

However, we now know that the sequencing, SDOT needs about 400 to 500,000 of those funds for upfront engineering and installation costs.

So we're simply, to achieve the same goal, we're just simply moving part of the funding to the department that needs it the most now, and that's SDOT.

We're moving that budget authority from SPD to SDOT.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Any additional comments?

Council Member Nelson?

So this is from a voter-approved pot of money here?

No, this is a council-approved program, the school zone program, the old school zone program that's been in place for a while.

OK.

Well, I'll speak to this.

I return to my litmus test that I mentioned at the top here and it's, there has not been a public case made for why this has to be this, the original $1 million has to be in the supplemental budget and not in the 2024 budget.

And it's not clear that that money will be spent this year.

And I completely agree.

that the original use of that funding was to go to how much the streetcar program project would cost, because we have to know that things have changed since this was a live issue when it came before the public originally, namely that our You know, we've got a projected deficit in 2025, the impacts of COVID on downtown businesses, planning for the downtown light rail stations of the West Seattle Ballard line is really hot right now.

And also the fact that we've got a new mayor and likely more council members coming that could have different opinions about this project going forward when we'll be talking about that.

So- Madam Chair, I think we might be referring to a different item.

But a different amendment.

it's amendment eight um okay i believe yeah right never mind hold that thank you for taking that up that's okay thank you for teeing that up um are there any additional comments council member herbold on this item amendment number seven

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to speak to my strong support for this and I was actually all prepared to speak to the urgency that I thought Councilmember Nelson was speaking about this particular amendment.

We did just get a fantastic briefing in Councilmember Peterson's committee this week about the implementation of the council funding for expansion of school zone cameras and We learned that because of the the sequencing of the investments necessary to bring this up to to to implement the the council's priorities We're looking at probably fall of next year before these cameras are activated and the funding that Councilmember Peterson is proposing I think will help with that timeline a little bit by paying for things that need to be paid in a step in the sequence first before other elements that are going to be held up.

I think it really makes good, smart sense from an implementation perspective.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I think that Council Member Nelson, that's an old hand.

I'll speak to this and then I think we'll move forward.

I too will be supporting this.

Thank you for referencing the report that we received yesterday.

I'm not on the committee, but did have a chance to hear from my staff the great overview from SDOT prioritizing other less punitive traffic calming measures, especially in areas with the highest level of disadvantage.

Um, under equity index, I really appreciate that racial equity analysis that's being applied on the new cameras, the automated enforcement works to make sure that streets are safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

I think that this is a great opportunity for us to.

Uh, support a process that mandates warning for 1st, time offenders, and then also protects our privacy.

That includes privacy restrictions on data gathered and enshrined in state law under R.

C. W.

4663 170. so thank you so much.

You know, clearly support this effort.

I think that this is a better way for us to get at public safety than some other strategies.

And with that, I will look forward to voting.

Yes.

Any additional comments?

Okay, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on adoption of amendment number seven?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor.

Unanimous folks.

Okay, the motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

I'm still good to try to get through these last 2 amendment number 8. if we can council members Peterson and herbal.

Would you like to move it?

Yes, thank you, Chair.

I'll go ahead and move it.

And I am gonna simplify this amendment number eight with Council Member Herbold.

This motion will be slightly different than what's on the agenda.

It's the same concept to do something different than what the executive's proposing.

So simply, colleagues, I move to strike item 7.6, of council 120618 by just briefly by striking 7.6 we would keep the money where council originally put it in the general fund and the Seattle Transportation Benefit District and not for the downtown center city connector study.

Could I get a second for striking item 7.6 of the council 120618?

Second and second.

Okay.

It's been moved and seconded.

I just, I, I think I set a bad example with doing verbal amendments and committee earlier today and appreciate council member Lewis's support of trying to hammer that out.

But I want to make sure that central staff have the language that you're suggesting already in front of them.

Deputy director, please go ahead.

Just a procedural clarification.

I think you first need to, I mean, it might not matter that.

Deputy city clerk could weigh in.

I think you need to move the original amendment and then make a motion to orally amend it as follows.

But assuming that was the intent, I just need to clarify which part are we striking or perhaps Cal, I think is maybe on the line, could just instruct me of what I am changing on what is in front of me.

Okay.

And central staff, have you received the suggestion from the sponsors?

Yes, I spoke to Cal.

Okay.

Go ahead, Cal.

Thank you.

Ali, the amendment would be to item 7.6 in this column here, in this table here, we would be deleting the entire item.

So just a strikethrough for all those elements.

I think I'm reflecting it now on the screen, not in the proper format.

We'll, we'll get it ready, but essentially it would be eliminating item 7.6 from the bill and remembering subsequent sections as necessary.

That motion has been moved and 2nd, and how would you like to speak to that?

Yeah, just do not do not remember just to keep everything.

Simplified so that all the references are okay.

Okay, could you please describe the impact of that amendment as described by the sponsor?

As described by the sponsor, this would not allow spending on the Center City streetcar.

This would basically leave funding in fund balance in this case.

There is a separate item, item 114, I believe, that freed up the general fund from SDOT's mobility operations VSL.

With just striking 7.6, this would lead 250,000 in general fund fund balance and 805,000 in STBD fund balance.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to speak first to this amendment that you made?

Thank you, colleagues, or thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, as I expressed in committee last week, I support nearly all the elements in our mayor's downtown activation plan.

However, the proposal to spend a million dollars for the study of a proposed First Avenue streetcar has several problems.

In my view, the Central City Connector is expensive, redundant, disruptive, and less important than many other transportation Projects we have especially transportation safety projects.

So rather than Restate what I stated at last committee and I know we're tight on time Basically this amendment just says we're not going to do that now.

It's something we could discuss in the fall let's just keep the money where council originally had it which was in the general fund and Transportation benefit district.

Thank you

And Council Member Herbold, I assume you are a co-sponsor of this verbal amendment.

Would you like to speak to it?

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

I just think Consistent to the discussion around the mid-year supplemental, I think it's really important in funds that we add or subtract within the context of the mid-year supplemental.

I think it's really important that we recognize that this project has been on hold.

And so, I think a discussion around moving forward is a discussion that we should have, but we should not have it, we should not just assume that it's moving forward without that discussion, I think is what I'm trying to say here.

This is, this funding in the mid-year supplemental would do just that, it would move forward a project that has been held in the mid-year supplemental before we've had the conversation about whether or not it should be moving forward.

There is no plan for construction of the streetcar until and unless a plan is identified, it doesn't make sense to direct funds towards it.

And the only viable potential funding source for construction would be dipping into the MOVE levy renewal next year, which I believe will hinder the ability to fund safety and maintenance projects, and perhaps it would threaten voter approval.

In addition to the $93 million funding gap, which I'm still not certain whether or not that already identified $93 million gap assumes the arrival of federal funds or if absent the arrival of federal funds, the funding gap would be larger.

There's no funding plan for operations either, which would include several million dollars per year.

So again, By putting the funding for the planning in this supplemental, it is actually changing the policy of the previous administration, which was to put the project on hold.

So I just want to uplift something we heard from a constituent.

One constituent wrote to us, the three to four year plan construction on First Avenue would be catastrophic to business owners at the Pike Place Market who are still recovering from the costly burden of loss of business from the COVID-19 pandemic and who have bravely put up with the past 10 years of being hemmed in by major hotel construction, the waterfront project, and the removal of the viaduct.

the constituent goes on to say, give the businesses a breather.

I did support the idea of redirecting the funds to other uses, but understand, again, the interest in simplifying the amendment by keeping the funds in the place where they reside.

Now, again, until we can have that conversation with the executive about the project moving forward.

Thank you.

Okay, we are slightly over time.

I'm going to keep going.

I see council member Nelson's hand up next, but I would like to call on central staff.

Did you have some clarification you'd like to offer?

Yes, council members, I just wanted to very quickly state that the Center Streetcar has not had any updates since 2019, essentially.

And so, you know, the $90 million shortfall that we see in the current CIP is based on old numbers.

We don't know if that number is correct.

It does assume that we do get the federal funds for the project.

So that number could change.

As I understand the executive proposal in the mid-year supplemental, it is to essentially revisit all these numbers to help identify whether there is a path forward for this project or not.

And that is the proposal.

With this amendment, we would not be funding that effort.

Okay.

Council Member Nelson, you began speaking to this, I believe.

Did you have anything else you'd like to add?

Yeah.

You don't have to.

Thank you very much.

And I'm sorry for that before.

I was basically just saying that this is a, I was getting to the point of saying that this sounds more like a policy discussion and the words, is this project on hold or not that, you know, we do need to find out how much this will cost, but we also need to, to have the policy discussion about this project in itself.

And I heard really strong comment in the public comment period, very strong concerns, and I understand that there are very strong advocates as well.

But for a midyear supplemental, that cost of a million dollars I think could be allocated in the year, in the fall, and we could have a more robust conversation about this.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'll be rather brief, and if I might, actually, at the beginning of my comments, maybe just for the good of the order, maybe mention, given that we are 10 minutes over, that maybe this be our last agenda item, given some obligations some of us may have, and that maybe the other two items may be put over till the next meeting.

But just for the advisement of the body, but to go into my remarks on the amendment, I do understand where the sponsors are coming from in terms of wanting to call the question on the overall merits of this project.

I actually view the proposed action of the executive as consistent with wanting to get more clarity as central staff just indicated a moment ago on truing up from 2019 a feasibility study where there are still some outstanding assumptions that would need to be clarified.

I don't interpret this funding in the budget as necessarily being a signal one way or the other on whether the project as a whole will be green lit.

I understand there are significant issues in the community around mitigation or the merits of this project, and I'm not here to litigate those.

I would add that were this money to be pooled from the budget, as I serve representing the city on the Puget Sound Regional Council, I do understand we have a $7 million set aside at the Puget Sound Regional Council that is contingent on moving for this project, that is contingent on moving forward with truing up our 2019 feasibility study.

So for those reasons, I will not be voting for the amendment, though I do respect the intentions of the sponsors in bringing this forward.

I think that the information to be gleaned from the feasibility study and the set aside at PSRC are important considerations that lead me to oppose removing this money from the budget at this time.

Okay, excellent.

And, uh, any additional comments.

Okay, I, I, I, too, I really appreciate the arguments that have been made by the sponsors, especially council member purple advice chair.

I appreciate the, the, the.

Concern about all the issues that you raise.

Thank you.

I do think, though, as customer Lewis, I think noted as well.

The long promise Seattle streetcar, if it's going to ever come to fruition and connect our streetcar system, we do need the analysis.

So appreciate the concerns that have been raised.

I'm going to, I'm going to be voting no on this today.

Council member Nelson.

Did you have an additional comment before we vote?

Yeah, I did mention last time that, you know, any study should incorporate the, should really get the input of the small businesses along First Avenue, at least in the market community.

And that I feel strongly about that because I've become aware of how impactful major construction projects are.

And so whenever this feasibility study gets done, I do think that it should include the cost of potential mitigation for, and I know that that's difficult in Washington State, for impacts to businesses.

All right.

Okay, great.

All right, I think that concludes our comments here.

Again, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number eight?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

No.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

No.

Madam Chair, that is three in favor, two opposed.

Okay, the motion, is that correct?

The motion carries and the amendment Is adopted.

Confirming yes.

OK, Amendment 8 is adopted.

All right, so my understanding is that we only need a simple majority to pass this supplemental budget.

I know folks have other constraints.

We only have two more amendments.

These are from non-committee members.

If there is a need to exit stage right, I understand.

I think I'm gonna just plow through this with the expectation that I owe you time, and I apologize for that.

But we will understand if anybody has to step out.

With that, Madam Clerk, excuse me, I'm going to go ahead and introduce Amendment Number 9 on behalf of Council Member Strauss.

I move Amendment Number 9. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Central staff, could you please describe Amendment Number 9?

Yes.

Amendment 9 authored by Council Member Strauss would add $500,000 general fund to SDOT's urban design program to advance pedestrian and streetscape improvements to Ballard Avenue Northwest and the Ballard Brewery District.

This proposal is funded by the net positive general fund balance and a supplemental of 309,000 and another 191,000 by reducing the proposed 1.5Million dollars increase for high insurance renewal premiums.

And I'll just give it a that.

Okay, thank you so much on behalf of council member stress.

He has a number of comments that I'm happy to send to the committee here very briefly.

He's been trying to include additional funding for pedestrian safety and vibrancy in the brewery district for a number of years because of some other priorities in the budget.

Those have not been included.

For the Ballard Avenue Cafe Street, this funding will ensure that the pilot that is setting citywide policy is set up for success and that all Seattleites can see the potential for what can come to the neighborhood, the Brewery District.

This funding will connect Brewery District and Ballard Avenue, five blocks, for travel without a car and will create a plan for wide human-scale changes while implementing the immediate needs for safer streets and sidewalks.

This work would occur in September and October of this year, according to Councilmember Strauss.

Are there any additional comments or questions on this?

I appreciate that this was a template for safe streets and cafes.

I intend to vote yes on this item.

Did I hear something?

Sorry, Chair.

It's Council Member Peterson.

I'm having trouble.

Yes, please go ahead, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

I was having trouble pulling up my Zoom hand.

There we go.

Got it now.

The $500,000 from general fund, I guess, could central staff speak to the availability of half a million dollars from the general fund?

I didn't know that there was half a million dollars to spend from the general fund.

Maybe I'm missing something.

Please go ahead.

So as proposed, the Supplemental bill gave a net positive general fund balance of $309,000.

So using that supplemental bill, that positive general fund balance, and then reducing a supplemental bill item for the insurance premiums, which came in a little bit higher, but not as high as proposed by the executive, by reducing that by $191,000.

which is about $370,000 higher than what's needed to cover the 2023 insurance costs, which is how we came up with that $500,000 for the fund.

Council Member Peterson, you'll remember that the estimates for the insurance were higher than we all originally anticipated.

We asked some questions, central staff prodded.

It turns out that there was an amount that was $370,000 more than they actually needed for those increased insurance costs.

So that's where the vast majority of what Council Member Strauss is proposing.

That's where the vast majority of that funding is coming from because central staff helped identify.

that there was more than needed funding in that category in the proposed supplemental.

Then I think Ed and spoke to where the other 130 or so thousand came from, but that was a little insurance padding that was in the supplemental that has been identified from central staff.

Not seeing any additional comments.

I'm going to go ahead and call the roll on the passage of amendment number 9 from Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Abstain.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is three in favor, one abstain.

Okay, thank you.

The amendment is adopted and we will go on to the final amendment here from Council Member Morales.

On behalf of Council Member Morales, I move amendment number 10, Wonderful.

It's been moving 2nd and central staff.

Could you please briefly describe.

So, amendment 10 is authored by council member Morales.

This amendment would impose a provide zone 200,000 dollars of the 1.7Million dollar general fund proposed to be appropriated for 1 time expansion of cleaning services as part of the downtown activation plan.

The proviso would require that at least $200,000 of these one-time funds would serve the Chinatown ID neighborhood.

The boundaries of the MID include the core downtown area and a small portion of Soto and do not extend to the Chinatown International District.

So the DAP includes the CID neighborhood among its intended service areas.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

And on behalf of Council Member Morales, I'll add additional comments abbreviated.

Council Member Morales worked with the CID BIA and Friends of Little Saigon to draft this amendment to put forward this proviso that includes culturally appropriate services.

She did this in 2021 when we enhanced services for the CID.

We know that the MID is a great service provider.

We also saw that with the one-time sanitation surge in last year's funding, There was that having another contractor on top of the CID becomes complicated.

The coordination is important to get right.

They want to have someone from the city working with other service providers in that area to ensure that the CID is served and that stakeholders In the central Chinatown International District also see the benefits of the cleanup improvement efforts.

This proviso will help direct funding to provide needed support to enhance services while avoiding confusion for businesses and other organizations in the CID.

Is there any additional comments or questions?

Okay, I will be supporting this and appreciate that there's been broad stakeholder work done on this.

Adam Clerk, could you please call the roll on adoption of Amendment Number 10?

Council Member Harbold?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is three in favor.

Wonderful.

The amendment passes.

Well, thank you to my colleagues and all of your extended time here today.

We have the amended version in front of us.

On behalf of the Finance and Housing Committee, I thank you for sticking out with me to the bitter end here of our extended time frame.

We will have an opportunity for more comments on the supplemental budget, some questions that could potentially be answered before the next budget, including an amendment to Amendment Number 1. But at this point, we have gone through all of our amendments, items 1 through 10. I would like to move forward with passing the supplemental budget.

Is there any additional comments before we consider final passage?

Seeing none, I move to pass Council Bill 120618 as amended.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the passage of the bill as amended?

Council Member Mosqueda, I'm sorry, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Yes.

Okay, Madam Chair, that is three in favor.

Wonderful and none against.

Fantastic.

It has been unanimously approved by the majority of the Finance Committee that the supplemental bill be advanced.

We will have another conversation on August 8th and we will move forward with the motion carrying and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended to the August 8th meeting.

Well, we have kept you very long and I appreciate it and promise to not do that at our next meeting.

Our next meeting will include an update from the progressive, excuse me, from the A revenue sustainability work group, and look forward to having a report out at the August 10th meeting, beginning at 930 a.m.

with that, thank you for your extended time today.

And for all of your amendments to the supplemental, our meeting is adjourned.