Good evening.
The September 9th, 2019 meeting of the Seattle Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee will come to order.
It is 5.32 p.m.
I'm Abel Pacheco, chair of the committee, and we have one agenda item today, and that is a public hearing on Council Bill 119600, which would update our city environmental review policies.
The next plus committee meeting is this Wednesday, September 11th at noon, back here in council chambers.
Before we begin, if there is no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.
Noah, would you please read the abbreviated title into the record?
Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 119-600, an ordinance relating to environmental review, amending sections of the Seattle Municipal Code to clarify timelines and the content of administrative appeals, to authorize the development of director's rules, to clarify the content of environmental documents, and to make corrections and technical amendments.
And before we begin, Lish Whitston from Council Central Staff is going to join us.
Lish, thank you for joining us.
And I wanted to see if you want to get started on a brief overview.
Sure, thank you.
So this legislation updates the city's SEPA regulations, State Environmental Policy Act regulations, incorporates new state regulations and best practices from other jurisdictions, and makes changes to clarify the city's intent.
There are three types of exemptions and waivers that are incorporated that have been recently adopted in state law.
The first is housing related waivers of appeal.
The legislation incorporates provisions from House Bill 1923 adopted this past spring.
This bill was part of the state's response to the statewide housing crisis.
It continues to require environmental review, but states that some environmental reviews are not subject to SEPA appeals.
If adopted, the city could move forward with actions like adopting sub-area plans, rezoning near frequent transit service, or changing single-family zones to allow a wider range of housing types after going through the environmental review process.
But people who believe the environmental review was deficient would not be able to appeal the decision.
This provision would sunset on April 1st, 2021. The second piece of state law that's being adopted as part of this legislation are categorical exemptions that were adopted into state law in 2012. These types of actions are limited to a set of changes that would provide environmental benefits or changes that were studied under other environmental impact statements.
In particular, changes that implement the comprehensive plan or shoreline master plan program may be categorically exempt, which means that they do not need to go through environmental review on their own.
But that's only if the change implements the Comforts of Plan or the Shoreline Management Program.
And the Comforts of Plan and Shoreline Management Program had already been the subject of an environmental impact statement.
So basically this section says that you don't need to do environmental review on those actions twice.
The third are to broaden the city's application of state infill development exemptions.
The state regulations allow for the exemptions of smaller infill development projects that are consistent with the city's comprehensive plan.
This is already in place in the city's urban centers, including downtown, First Hill, Capitol Hill, Northgate, South Lake Union, University District, and Uptown.
In these areas, residential projects with up to 200 units or small commercial buildings are exempt from review under SEPA.
But if they have 40 or more parking spaces, they still need to prepare at least a SEPA checklist.
Large projects in downtown Seattle or South Lake Union are generally bigger than this and are subject to SEPA review.
In addition, these exemptions are tied to the comprehensive plan.
Once an area meets the amount of growth expected under the comprehensive plan, then SEPA is required.
The legislation will apply the same rules to urban villages.
Projects with less than 200 units, with less than 40 parking spaces, and in areas where the conference plan's estimated growth hasn't yet been achieved are exempt from SEPA, but other projects will still be subject to SEPA review.
Looking at other jurisdictions and best practices, we have two.
We've looked at other large jurisdictions in Washington State where there are currently time limits on how long a hearing examiner's review of a SEPA appeal can take place.
In King County, there's a limit of 90 days.
Tacoma has a 120-day limit.
And the proposal for Seattle is to use a 120-day limit, allow the hearing examiner to expand that by 30 days if it's appropriate, and allow longer appeals processes if all parties agree.
The second set of changes that are incorporated as part of looking at other jurisdictions' best practices are allowing the Department of Construction Inspections to develop guidelines that apply and guide environmental review.
Large jurisdictions with environmental review regulations like New York and San Francisco have guidelines that provide a consistent level of analysis under their versions of SEPA.
In Seattle, currently each consultant has its own approach to drafting environmental documents.
This can make it difficult for lay people and decision makers to compare documents and to understand whether or not a SEPA analysis has been done appropriately.
The legislation would allow the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to adopt director's rules that specify how environmental review will be done.
Three final changes sort of fall into the bucket of things that have come up in recent SEPA appeal hearings.
The first is related to economic analysis.
State regulations are clear that economic analysis is not part of the environmental analysis required under SEPA.
However, state law allows for analysis of non-environmental issues alongside environmental reviews.
The city has voluntarily chosen to analyze economic impacts of decisions, but because it is outside of SEPA, under state law, it should not be subject to appeal.
This legislation clarifies that economic analysis is required but not subject to appeal under SEPA.
Similarly, the legislation also clarifies that analysis of impacts on individual businesses is not required.
There are limits on the fiscal data that the city can release regarding individual businesses.
This makes it inadvisable for the city to study impacts on specific businesses.
The legislation clarifies that the economic analysis doesn't apply to individual businesses.
The legislation removes a section in the SEPA code related to permitting that conflicts with the provision of the land use code.
The land use code has relatively clear requirements for permitting when there is a SEPA appeal.
It states that permits are issued after the last date that is available to appeal an environmental review.
So there's a decision published.
There's an appeal period where someone can file an appeal.
If no one files an appeal, then a permit is issued.
If it is appealed, then permits are issued after the appeal has been heard or after an appeal has been dismissed.
This is much clearer than the SEPA section which has different timelines and frankly is hard to interpret.
And the final set of changes are related to lead agency.
The legislation clarifies that the legislative department may be the lead department on SEPA analyses.
The current code has a section that states except for the legislative department, The lead agency is the department that initiates environmental review, but it's not clear on what the legislative department's role is.
So the bill clarifies that the legislative department can choose to be lead agency or can delegate that role to a city department.
And that's it.
Betty Lish, did you want to walk through really briefly or real quickly through the amendments, the proposed amendments?
Yeah, I don't have them in front of me, but very briefly, there are two from Councilmember Herbold and two from the Chair.
Councilmember Herbold has one amendment that relates to the appeals of environmental determinations for changes to single family areas.
if the change would allow duplexes, triplexes, or cottage development in a single family area.
It says that if those changes are taking place in an area with either high risk of displacement or low access to opportunity, then there is a SEPA appeal that then that type of action in those areas there would be the possibility of a SEPA appeal.
The second amendment is related to the SDCI director's rules.
This one's a little simpler.
It says that in drafting the director's rules, the Department of Construction and Inspections should consult with departments with relevant expertise and issue joint director's rules with directors of those departments as is appropriate.
council member Pacheco's amendments.
It's pop quiz.
I am sorry they are slipping my
Sure.
So the two amendments that I brought forth, one would provide more clarity around the types of appeals and timelines with the hearing examiner.
And the second amendment, boy, just let me see what the second one was.
I'm trying to bug myself.
The second one asks the hearing examiner to report back on opportunities for streamlining or improving processes.
On the front end.
Yeah.
Yep.
Well, I've been joined by my council colleagues, Council Member Herbold and Council Member O'Brien.
Thank you for joining me tonight for the public hearing.
Are there any other questions or comments?
Seeing that there are no questions or comments, I'm going to now open the public hearing on Council Bill 119600. Speakers are limited to two minutes of public comment.
If a speaker's comment exceeds the two minutes, the microphone will be turned off.
If any groups of three or more people signed up together, they can receive up to five minutes of public comment.
And first on our list is David Ward followed by Megan Cruz.
Hello, I'm David Ward.
I'm the president of SCALE.
We represent over 25 different neighborhood organizations trying to protect Seattle as an environmentally friendly city and an affordable place to live.
SCALE strongly opposes all elements of Council Bill 119600. The bill says that economic impacts of individual businesses are not required, which means that Amazon, with over 53,000 employees here, with the employees making an average of $179,000 a year is not required to have environmental impact, economic impacts.
The same is true for other big tech employees.
These economic issues also are not subject to appeal.
So the economic issues regarding displacement and other issues that affect people of color, low income people, seniors, people who are paying more than 30 or 50% of their income on rent, These would not be subject to appeal because of the economic implications.
Also, the economic implications of increased traffic congestion, police and fire services, cost of schools, and replacing most of our wastewater and sewer pipes would not be able, subject to appeal.
And this certainly would not positively affect affordable housing if we cannot examine the economic issues.
Putting development specific projects under non-project EIS is not good because that weakens what would be required under those.
And we should not limit the times for the appeals.
We should not be expanding the exemptions.
And council should not be the lead on the legislative department.
And we certainly should not be using SDCI to create the rules.
It's like the fox guarding the hen house.
build lot line to lot line so that it's easier for the hens to be eaten by the foxes, build taller so more hens are there to be eaten by the foxes, take away the old trees so that there are no more places for the hens to hide.
We're doing everything we can for the developers at the expense of the public.
Thank you, David.
Next is Megan Cruz, followed by Michelle Kleiss.
Thank you.
This legislation was proposed by conflating environmental protection with the lack of affordable housing.
That's a false narrative and a terrible idea.
It divides people and says we can't achieve both affordable housing and sustainable density.
Labeling tactics as obstructive is more of the same dogma for appeals.
The fact is design review and MUP have large gaps in coverage and provide minimal citizen input.
If, at the end of the process, environmental impacts go unaddressed, the system's only option for mitigation is through the hearing examiner.
Decisions are being challenged for their harmful environmental impacts.
The solution, then, isn't to weaken environmental analysis.
It's to find out what's wrong with the system and fix it.
This last-minute bill was designed to greenlight permit approvals, not address unanswered environmental concerns.
It was crafted with select input and leaves out critical details.
It assigns new rulemaking authority to the department that considers developers its primary constituents.
This department's decisions have shown inconsistency and offer no explanations.
It isn't surprising then that they've led to challenges.
The system needs a big dose of equity.
The city could start by getting input from all government, private, and public stakeholders to define areas not previously addressed and hammer out equitable rules that don't favor any one party.
Put SEPA review up front and add environmental experts to design review.
If you do that, you'll see a decrease in challenges.
Please table this rushed, flawed, and incomplete bill.
Seattle wants to adopt a Green New Deal, and this just doesn't fit.
Don't weaken environmental protections and public input.
We need both sustainable density and affordable housing.
There's something wrong with a system that can't deliver both.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Next is Michelle Kleiss, followed by Taran Martin.
Hi, I would just like to say that I think we need to keep the EPA and the SEPA working better than it does because on some of these developments, they have not taken into the new forms of transportation and the way the public uses the streets and the sidewalks, for instance, on 2nd and 3rd Avenue and Pike and Pine Corridors and some of the actual work papers show images that aren't there or don't show some of the images that should be there like the new transit system.
So there will be consequences if the buildings go through as they are shown on the paper and the people who are going to be suffering are going to be pedestrians, transients, people in their cars, people on the buses, and the people then who are going to be affected by it are going to be the city because they're going to be liable for a lot of suits and a lot of repercussions from unintended consequences from not really having a proper environmental impact statement on these buildings.
Thank you.
Next is Turan Martin, followed by Ryan Paul.
Good evening, Council Members.
I'm Turan Martin with Future Wise.
Our organization is pleased to voice our support for Council Bill 119600. The bill will lay the procedural groundwork for the city to adopt new land use policies in accordance with Washington House Bill 1923, and we look forward to having more discussion about that at future PLEZ Committee meetings.
The amendment introduced by Councilmember Herbold pertaining to the appeal of SEPA decisions of the development of single family zoning in either high displacement risk zones or low areas of opportunity is pretty complicated and unfortunately we can't support it.
While FutureWise appreciates the amendment's intent, we have serious concerns about the approach suggested in the proposal.
We do not support the creation of a complex neighborhood-specific system of SEPA appeal exemption rules, especially given the inherent inequity of a system that allows wealthy groups to strategically misuse the appeal process to prevent more types of housing from being built in their neighborhoods.
As we stated in our comment letter, we encourage the council to pass this bill and then focus on land use changes that would go in the areas of the city which have high access to opportunity and low displacement risk.
House Bill 1923 gives Seattle a unique opportunity to change the highly inequitable patterns of exclusion that exist in some of our neighborhoods, while also allowing more homes to be built by transit and reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are driving our climate crisis.
We want to thank this committee for its leadership on tackling the interconnected issues of racial equity, climate resilience, and urban growth management.
We look forward to supporting you in the passage of this exciting new bill and others that we hope will follow.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Ryan Paul, followed by Melissa Hall.
Hello.
Hello, my name is Ryan Paul.
I'm a renter in District 7 Voter and a graphic designer who lives here in Seattle.
I just support these reforms to help us meet our goals with the Seattle New Green Deal.
and to help meet our affordable housing needs.
I support this reform because I remember when Seattle was a place people could move to and they could afford to live and work here.
And I believe this legislation is a piece of the puzzle in bringing that back.
And I would urge you all to vote in favor of this legislation, that amendment.
Thank you.
Next is Melissa Hall.
SIPA was a product of the pastoral environmental movement.
And as such, it has as an underlying assumption that not building is better for the environment, in most cases, than building.
This has not been borne out by current environmental policy.
And in order to reflect the current urbanist environmental standards, we need to challenge that underlying assumption that there is no harm in allowing current patterns to continue.
or in delaying development.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Elise Lockhart followed by Calvin Jones.
Hi, I'm Alice Lockhart with 350 Seattle.
I need to speak to a recent Seattle Times guest editorial on SIPA reform, this SIPA reform, which managed to, in the same breath, impugn the council, brand organizations like 350 who disagree with their position as special interests, and most importantly, to imply that SIPA reform is antithetical to the Green New Deal.
That could not be further from the truth.
With the climate clock ticking ever faster, the Seattle Green New Deal, as written, absolutely must include rapidly building thousands of units of affordable infill housing to combat climate destroying sprawl.
Continued misuse of SEPA, intended to obstruct and delay affordable housing legislation, and we know it would be coming, is absolutely antithetical to the Green New Deal.
Past uses of SEPA appeal to combat bike lanes and tiny homes to shelter our homeless are also antithetical to the spirit of the Green New Deal.
SEPA was intended to provide environmental review of things like chemical plants, not backyard cottages and not tiny homes.
Our state legislators knew when they crafted 1923 to close the loopholes that allowed I'm sorry, our state legislators knew this when they crafted a House Bill 1923 to close SEPA loopholes that allowed it to be misused.
Seattle should proceed with this good legislation to bring our municipal code in harmony with current state law.
Thank you.
Oh, and to support the Green New Deal.
Next is Calvin Jones, followed by John Fox.
Hi, my name is Calvin Jones and I'm an organizer with Tech for Housing and a renter in District 3. I'm here to support the legislation as written and unfortunately oppose Councilmember Herbold's amendment that would exempt certain lower opportunity neighborhoods from some of these changes.
I have an email here from Marty Kaplan, who sued the city over SEPA appeal to oppose Councilmember O'Brien's Backyard Cottage legislation.
And I'll just quote from it for a second.
He says, many thanks to hundreds of Seattleites statewide who have already contributed just over $40,000 to date covering most of our appeal budget.
Please consider help cover our last $10,000 of anticipated costs.
Also, just yesterday, Claudia Newman of Brooklyn and Newman LLC penned an op-ed in the Seattle Times opposing these changes without disclosing that Brooklyn and Newman is one of the most prolific litigators of SEPA appeals, as reported by Erica C. Barnett on Twitter.
I think we have to ask ourselves, look at these emails and on the opinion page of the Seattle Times, whether or not this is the way that we want to have a conversation about housing policy in our society.
I think that the conversation around zoning reform and lower opportunity neighborhoods is one of the most important conversations we can have, and I'd like to thank you, Councilmember Horvath, for being a tireless champion on these issues.
But unfortunately, SEPA as it exists today is only accessible to homeowner groups that can raise tens of thousands of dollars to appeal or law firms that have $200 an hour lawyers that are able to do this litigation.
And so any lever of power that's exclusively accessible to the wealthy will be used exclusively by the wealthy to further their own interests.
When we talk about housing policy in these neighborhoods, I think we should construct that policy by taking as much public feedback as possible from the affected communities and not rely on wealthy homeowner groups to purportedly represent lower income communities' interests on their behalf.
So thank you, council members, for all your work on this issue.
Please adopt the legislation without any amendments to weaken it.
And then let's have a robust conversation about housing policy in our city where all voices are heard equally and no voice stamps the others out.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is John Fox, followed by Lisa Kuhn.
John Fox Displacement Coalition.
First, I'd like to correct the record about Mr. Bricklin and Claudia Newman.
We owe them a great debt of gratitude.
We have a Growth Management Act and SEPA precisely because of the role they played in helping craft that legislation.
Anyone of us who's been around for any length of time knows that.
And always, it's been used to protect not just rural, farmland, suburban areas, but also urban areas.
We want to echo their concerns from the editorial, the concerns from Claudia Newman.
These changes effectively dismantle SEPA as a tool to address the impacts of growth and redevelopment in our city.
Introduced only a few weeks ago, they're being rammed through without solid data.
and without soliciting multiple perspectives, and of course, not with the input of communities so directly affected.
There's an irony here because this is precisely we have seen the number of appeals by citizens go up because of the increasing tendency on the part of city officials to treat substantive concerns of citizens with disdain.
When citizens don't see anything in the existing codes, When little or nothing is done to address their valid concerns, such as impacts on low-cost housing, small businesses, tree canopy, urban streams, and historic buildings, it is when those things are not adequately addressed.
That's when we see some appeals, and it's an insult to community groups to call them frivolous.
Appeals now require hundreds of hours of volunteer time, tens of thousands of dollars to bring in experts and do honest research that city planners fail to do.
These are onerous and egregious amendments that attack directly at the heart of SEPA and will undercut our ability to manage growth in this city.
Suspend these proposals until there's more input and we can do this right.
Thank you.
Thank you, John.
I just want to clarify for the record, for the committee.
First, my colleagues, my council colleagues are committed to public service, and so in this committee, I try to do my best to make sure at least that we remain levels of respect, and I ask everyone to do the same.
The amendments that I offered have come directly from community, Wallingford Community Council specifically.
They thought that ways to make improvements to the bill and be productive in terms of the conversation and continuing to drive the conversation forward.
So with respect to members of the public of your testimony and the input that you provide and the perspective you provide.
I know myself and my council colleagues as well that spend a tireless amount of hours to really make sure that your voice is heard through the process.
So, please, I ask that respect be shared both ways.
Next is Lisa Kuhn, followed by John Shoshone?
Shoshone?
Shoshone?
Snowy.
Snowy.
My apologies.
Hi, my name is Lisa Kuhn.
Today I'm here to tell you a story about a little town in Italy called Hanzono.
It was a medieval town on a hill.
There were about 300 residents.
The economy was primarily based on chestnuts harvested from surrounding orchards.
Then an entrepreneurial Count Mario Bagno showed up in 1962 with money and an idea to create an Italian Las Vegas.
So he bought the buildings, forced the residents out, and bulldozed the town and the orchards, only leaving the church and the graveyard.
And I'm gonna quote the article here.
After the old Consono was demolished, the new Consono could be built on its ashes like some mentally ill phoenix.
Anyway, so landslides started happening.
You know, kind of like landslides on Lakeview Avenue and on Beach Drive and Perkins Avenue and well, yeah.
Landslides.
And finally, in 1976, there was a landslide that took out the main access road and the utilities infrastructure.
Turns out the bulldozed chestnut trees were what had stabilized the town.
So no trees, no town.
It's now an abandoned trash heap.
Turns out the landslides were bad enough that they couldn't reestablish the infrastructure.
So no infrastructure, no town.
And wouldn't it have been nice if there had been environmental protections which could have kept this developer from doing this?
Well, we do have environmental protections, but evidently you want to gut them.
All right, fine.
Good luck with that.
Thank you.
Next is John S., followed by Mark Brunson.
Good evening.
I'm John So Snowy, like cold weather, just to make it easy for you.
I'm a board member for the Downtown Residence Alliance and a resident at Escala.
Like you, we are supporters of more density, livability, walkability and affordable housing, but not at the expense of our health and safety and an unsustainable future.
With prudent decisions, we can have both.
When I read the recent article I've heard referred to in the Times on this bill, I was quite frankly appalled.
Councilmember O'Brien, Your blanket accusation against anyone that files an appeal as, quote, a NIMBY obstructionist with the time to track land use policy and the money need to hire a specialist attorney is not only false, but offends me as much as some of our President's statements.
Councilmember Pacheco, I agree with your statement that SEPA should not be a tool used to prevent dense, environmentally friendly development and walkable, livable neighborhoods.
But what you say and what this bill does are two different things.
Watering down SEPA, the State Environmental Protection Act, as this bill does, is not environmentally friendly nor helpful in achieving walkable, livable neighborhoods.
Our experience downtown is that the root cause of project delays is not frivolous appeals, but the need to appeal ill-conceived, nonfunctional, unsafe, unhealthy designs and poor DCI decisions.
One thing this bill does get right is addressing SEPA issues at the beginning of a project.
But that's negated when you allow developers to ignore adverse transportation impacts.
Instead of watering down SEPA, you should focus on strengthening the DCI review and approvals process that they are meant to serve, thereby organically and not by legal maneuvering, reducing the number of appeals and lessening the load on the hearing examiner's office.
And then everybody wins.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Next is Mark Bronson, followed by Carl Nelson.
Hi, I want to thank you all for hearing from us tonight.
My name is Mark Brunson.
I'm a renter on Capitol Hill.
In the time that I have lived here, I have seen numerous delays to affordable housing and sustainable transportation projects because of SEPA.
Despite sounding like it should protect our environment, in Seattle, it is consistently used as a veto of environmental policy by anyone wealthy enough to afford a team of lawyers.
We have major crises regarding affordable housing and greenhouse gas emissions that can be solved in Seattle by prioritizing sustainable transportation and building housing so that more people can live without a car.
It is maddening that a policy to protect our environment counts as a negative any policy that mildly inconveniences drivers or doesn't allow parking at a time when we need to reduce car dependency to meet our climate goals.
I want to thank you for passing the Green New Deal resolution and urge you to pass this reform so that we can actually put it to action.
I want SEPA to protect our environment and not Seattle's exclusionary policies.
Thank you.
Next is Carl Nelson followed by Kelsey Hamlin.
Hello and thank you, Councilmembers.
I'm a tenure District 4 renter, transit writer, small business owner, and resident.
And I just wanted to speak to the ways in which SEPA appeals are being used right now in a cruel effect.
hurting people.
I supported Councilmember Sawant's legislation that would allow us to build 40 instead of three tiny house villages and that would get an estimated 3,700 people off the streets and indoors.
We could have that legislation in front of the council as soon as this month if it weren't for a frivolous appeal of the city's SEPA determination of non-significance.
Those 3,700 people remain on the street exposed and vulnerable.
CEPA reform would streamline this appeal process and save the lives of people who desperately need us to be the compassionate, modern, and forward-thinking city we aspire to be.
I would urge the council to pass the bill without amendments and help those folks out.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Next is Kelsey Hamlin, followed by Janet Way.
All right.
Hello, I'm Kelsey Hamlin.
I'm with Sightline Institute, a nonpartisan sustainability think tank for all of Cascadia.
As many council members know, SIPA is a very, very important piece of legislation for the environment.
But it's also been used as a loophole for homeowners to advance their vendettas against housing, especially near them.
It has gotten to the point where I would confidently label these lawsuits as predatory delay.
The changes before you today do not gut SEPA.
Instead, they strengthen it by streamlining the SEPA review process and setting a time limit to make the process more efficient.
These changes will let city staffers spend less time reproducing multiple SEPA analyses and will cut costs for lengthy and unnecessary appeals designed to steer housing away from wealthy neighborhoods.
In a city like Seattle, which has maintained tree canopy in areas with concentrated growth and lost tree canopy in single-family areas, sightline shows this, it is far better to create housing here, near job centers, than to push people out, forcing them to pump CO2 into the air with seagull occupancy vehicles, and slowly but surely build houses where whole forest swans were.
Capping the length of SEPA appeals is simple and good.
Despite what some may have you believe, the environment and housing do not have to be at odds.
We agree.
Affordability and sustainability go together.
Sightline fully supports the introduced legislation.
The highly inequitable status quo in which wealthy individuals can strategically delay local efforts to increase housing diversity needs to change.
Herbold's well-intentioned amendment would likely reinforce this problematic pattern, unfortunately.
Anti-displacement would best be applied at the second step of this bill's process when House Bill 1923 has a menu of options that we can all look at.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Next is Janet Way followed by Robert Seidman.
Good evening, my name is Janet Way.
I am a board member representing Save the Market Entrance Group and we asked to be made a party of record with legal standing on the matter of ordinance CB 119600. The matter of relating to environmental review.
At this time, I would like to place today's Seattle Times op-ed by attorney Claudia Newman, entitled Seattle City Council Uses False Narrative to Gut the Use of State Environmental Policy Act in the record of this hearing by reference.
We believe that SEPA is an act that gives the public an important and vital role in policy process.
The public provides valuable information and details that can enhance development on safety, air and water quality, historic protection, and protecting the greater good.
The right to comment and appeal is a sacred trust the state put in place to protect the environment and the people's rights.
And in this time of an assault on our environment, on the national front, It is a reminder of all the battles in the past fought to protect our environment, and we urge you to reject this proposal.
And we are supportive of Councilmember Herbold's amendments to address displacement.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Robert Seidman, followed by Paul Nathan.
Good afternoon.
My name is Bob Seidman.
I'm also a board member of the Save the Market Entrance, and I'm not wealthy, and I have been somebody that thinks that we should preserve the environmental protections that we have.
SEPA is a cornerstone and practice of land use and environmental law.
The one thing I do want to address is the council bill of 11.9600.
the establishing of the availability of pro tem examiners.
This is an outsourcing of the judiciary responsibility to who?
That's it, to who?
I would like to see the council entertain the usual arbitration process known as the strike list procedure.
If a pro tem officers are to be used, the public should be able to participate in the selection process to be sure impartiality is to be maintained.
I want to go back a little in history.
This is not the first big speculative period in Seattle.
Right after the Klondike gold rush, there was quite a bit of money in Seattle, quite a bit of speculation, but it didn't prevent the city fathers from putting away property so we could have the city parks that we have right now.
We wouldn't have the path around Green Lake.
We wouldn't have the drive around Lake Washington if people didn't respect the environment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Paul Nathan followed by Jeffrey Baxter.
Good evening.
Thank you.
Hello.
My name is Paul Nathan.
I'm a District 7 resident and a software engineer.
I've been a renter and I've been a homeowner.
Can you speak a little closer to the mic?
Certainly.
Thank you.
Apologies, sir.
I've been a renter and a homeowner.
I've had to test my earth and my water for lead in regards to my child.
Environmental concerns really matter.
But one of the key issues identified in this nation is the misuse of environmental analysis processes to slow down needed developments and improvements in our built society.
What has happened in the nation has happened here.
This has shrunk the amount of housing built, driving up the cost of housing for all of our workforce.
So the proposed SEPA alignment legislation preserves the vital requirements of environmental analysis while supporting building more housing for the many households and our children in this, our beloved city, now and in the future.
Our children need to be able to live here too.
I therefore support and urge the support with this proposed legislation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Jeffrey Baxter, followed by Stephen Roberts.
Hello.
My name is Jeffrey.
And first, I want to just thank you all for having a hearing at the evening time when it was possible for me to get here.
And I also want to thank the council members for putting up with so much abuse over various things, this included, but other things as well.
And I didn't know you were President Trump today.
That's news to me.
I don't consider you that way, Council Member O'Brien.
And I'm a White Center resident, and I will definitely be supporting Lisa Herbold for her reelection.
I simply urge support of this measure.
And I really don't have much other to say than that.
I just think it's great.
If we don't protect, if we don't develop density in our cities, then all the things that people are saying about 300-person towns in the rural areas is gonna come to pass, because the population is needed by the demand that we have in terms of jobs.
We have a lot of jobs here, and if we don't build housing here in Seattle, then it's going to get built out in Issaquah or wherever, where way, way, way more trees are going to get cut down.
So I 100% support everything you're doing, and thank you so much.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
Next is Stephen Roberts, followed by Andrew Tsang.
Thank you.
I'm opposed to Council Bill 119-600.
I am a resident in downtown Seattle.
I, as well as every person I know who lives in downtown Seattle, is in favor of more affordable housing, addressing the homeless situation.
And it's just a question of what's the most responsible way to do it.
I think this bill is ill-considered.
Our goal is to have a livable downtown.
The people who seem to be supporting this, as my understanding is, is developers seem to be supporting this.
And their interest is not necessarily in a livable Seattle downtown.
They're corporations whose interest is in profit, whose interest, who won't be living here.
And I am opposed to anything that weakens the Environmental Protection Act.
I think that's inconsistent with a Green New Deal.
I'm opposed to anything that says traffic considerations cannot be considered in new developments.
I think that creates more traffic problems, more pollution in the air, and is totally inconsistent with a Green New Deal.
Anything that limits our appeals ability for irresponsible projects is something I'm totally opposed to.
There's a project that an expert has said, and I will quote from the hearing examiner, his findings included an indication that on the fifth floor of the building facing the alley and the proposed units would see daylight reductions in the range of 75% or more and some units would experience adequate daylight conditions for only 12% of daylight hours and then in winter hours there would be less.
The builder is not concerned about that and anything that limits our ability to bring these issues up or appeal these issues is something that I'm definitely opposed to.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Andrew Tsang.
Good evening, council members.
Good evening, Noah.
You know, my name is Andrew Tsang, and I'm a University of Washington urban planning student and geography student.
And, you know, with all due respect, I'm not I'm not a developer.
You know, I'm just a student.
And I'm here to, you know, discuss the SIPA legislation because I care deeply about affordable housing and sustainability.
That's why I study the things I do, and as I understand it, the SEPA legislation was created a number of years ago based on a set of progressive values that we as a state created, because we care about protecting communities from things like coal plants and whatever.
But as of now, this legislation has been co-opted by communities who possess the privilege to be able to hire lawyers that cost hundreds of dollars per hour, to go through appeals that may cost you know multiple tens of thousands of dollars that you know as it relates to affordable housing is not going to be used by the people who desperately need to use it the most.
This legislation the idea of SEPA was created in during a time where we conflated the ideas of environmental protectionism with the idea of development itself and you know maybe when we were building suburbs As far as the eye can see, that might have been somewhat of the case, but contemporary urban planning thought no longer agrees with this kind of idea.
And so I think as the paradigm shifts, city council must also shift how we administratively handle the development of new projects through our city in order to better allow folks to live close to transit, to live close to where they work.
And as such, we can finally work to alleviate the affordable housing shortage that our region so faces.
SIPA exists only as a weapon as of now for largely privileged groups in order to really muscle housing away from where they believe and where they live.
And I hope that, you know, with all my heart, city council can see through this and adopt these proposed recommendations in the strongest form possible.
Thank you so much for your time.
Have a great evening.
Thank you and go dogs.
Next on our list is LaGail Sosnowi.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I am LaGail Sosnowi.
I live downtown.
And I just want to say it's unbelievable to me that a progressive city like Seattle would even consider trampling on a citizen's right to appeal, whether it's transportation or whatever.
I want each of you to know that there could be blood on your hands if this bill is passed unless it's revised.
We're not saying throw it out.
Just consider some revisions that would make it work.
While I can't speak to the appeals of other areas of the city, in this case, one size does not fit all.
You have to look at each area.
And downtown, I have to tell you, the high-rise projects have not misused SEPA, as some have claimed.
They have been and will continue to be the result of serious research-substantiated threats to our health, well-being, and livability that are caused by ill-conceived designs by greedy, out-of-state, and foreign developers.
If you take a serious look at our legitimate concerns about the watering down of SEPA review and the inadequacy of the design review processes and the potential negative effects to our city and its residents and not be blinded by the developer dollar sign rhetoric, I believe that you can craft a bill that is good for everyone.
And remember, you don't have to do this today.
You have until April 2021 to make any decisions with regard to House Bill 1123. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next on our list is Brooke Broad, followed by Mark Foltz.
Hello, my name is Brooke Broad, and I live in the U District, and I'm here to speak in favor of this legislation.
As you all know, this is not my first time testifying.
Over the years, I have attended many hearings and meetings, so much so that my partner and I half-jokingly refer to these evenings as date night.
But as much as I enjoy coming here and appreciate all you do, there are other things that I could be doing with my time.
Unfortunately, the misuse and even abuse of SEPA has resulted in decades-long delays to passing sensible legislation that keeps me coming back here over and over and over again and keeps us as a city from addressing other critical issues that need to be worked on.
These abuses are not protecting our open spaces, wilderness, or farmlands.
They aren't preventing the sprawl that results in greater greenhouse gas emissions.
They aren't saving our salmon or our orca.
They are just worsening our climate and housing crisis.
I support legislation that brings some sanity to our really drawn-out Seattle process.
This legislation is a step forward in that direction, and I wholeheartedly support it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Mark Foltz, followed by Leslie Booker.
Hello.
My name is Mark Foltz, and I live in Wallingford.
Through our public process, I've testified many times in support of policies and projects like completing the missing link, building housing for the homeless at Fort Lawton, mandatory housing affordability.
However, once these projects entered the SEPA process, especially the SEPA appeals process, I, along with almost the entire rest of the public, was shut out.
With some friends, I wrote a 20-page amicus brief in support of MHA.
during the appeal.
However, because we were unable to raise, you know, five or six figures for lawyers, I wasn't able to file it.
It was shut out.
While I think it's important to make the city do its homework, we should not allow small groups of well-resourced people to delay urgent changes, changes that improve our built environment and sustainability, and deliver much-needed affordable housing.
I want to thank the committee, especially Councilmembers Pacheco and O'Brien for working on this legislation, and please pass it as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Leslie Bucker, followed by Steve Rustello.
Hey guys, my name is Leslie Bucher, and I'm an 11-year resident of Seattle, and I'm here to ask you to table this bill today as it stands.
The increase in hearing examiner appeals is a sign that the public has something to say, but we're not being heard.
SEPA standards are imperative.
They should be non-political and non-negotiable.
They're meant to protect the natural environment and the city we're building and living in together.
We need sustainable density that gives equal access to environmental protection.
Don't water down SEPA.
Please don't take our voice away little by little.
Please table this bill as it stands.
Thank you.
Thank you, Leslie.
My apologies on mispronunciation of your last name.
Steve Rossello?
Most of the arguments for this are for a cause and for having a particular outcome.
But what the problem is, is that there is just not one thing the city should be caring about.
And if you tear down the protections to make some things easier, you make a whole lot of things easier.
So I recommend that this be tabled and be looked at more seriously.
How about taking a look at the front end of the land use process?
Design Review used to cover a wide range of things, site-specific.
Every one of them was not used on every site, but now You can't do much with the city till the end, and so you get a lot more appeals.
And this idea that an appeal is a very simple thing, I don't find that to be true.
An appeal is something for a lot of us folks is very hard thing to decide to do because, yes, it's a very big commitment.
This is not a simple act.
This is something that people do out of pure frustration.
We have a couple of minutes to speak on this tonight.
This process is going very, very quickly.
The city should be perfect, aren't you, right now, because you have all your new proposals to make housing appear, but you keep tearing down the more affordable housing faster than you're building it.
And until we start taking a look at the processes and giving people back the rights in this city to be part of the process, you know, maybe even, how about this word, neighborhood planning.
Let's look at the whole city and maybe every neighborhood doesn't have to be stamped by the same cookie cutter over and over again.
Maybe the city got to consider the neighborhoods, not just how easy it is to administer.
Thank you, Steve.
Next is Carl Hittenbummer.
followed by Donna Murphy.
My name is Carl Hiltbrenner.
I'm a downtown District 7 software engineer.
I'm not a developer or anything.
I'm here to support the legislation as written.
SEPA is good intention that has gone horribly wrong.
Residents use SEPA not to protect the environment, but to slow down infill housing during a housing and environmental crisis.
Residents are demanding more parking and less density, which leads to more sprawl and more carbon emissions.
This is not what SEPA was meant for.
One example is the Bullitt Center, which is advertised as the greenest commercial building in the world.
The greenest commercial building in the world was subject to a SEPA appeal.
The reasons why?
Not enough parking.
Not enough parking for the greenest commercial building in the world?
Another one were complaints about the shadows from the roof overhanging projections.
Those projections, solar panels.
At this point, SEPA has been used not to protect the environment, but it's used to protect the status quo.
We need to adopt this legislation and support upzoning and transit-oriented development.
Denser infill development and TOD are how we as a city are going to take steps to reduce carbon emissions.
As long as SEPA is protecting the status quo, we're going to need to find a way to make new density and TOD possible.
And by doing that, we can help Seattle live up to its name as a green, environmentally friendly city.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Donna Murphy, followed by Jesse Simpson.
Donna Murphy?
No?
Jesse Simpson?
Hi, I'm Jesse Simpson.
I volunteer with the Capitol Hill Renter Initiative, and I'd like to speak in favor of this bill to reform SEPA.
As we all know, Seattle faces a housing affordability crisis and a climate crisis.
Allowing denser housing types like duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and apartments is critical to addressing both of these problems at once.
For the sake of our own future and the housing affordability for renters in the city.
We need to allow the many people who would love to live in Seattle in walkable, culturally vibrant, and transit-connected communities to do so here.
It's perverse that SEPA as it exists is being used to delay and block the multifamily housing we need throughout the city.
During the time I've been paying attention to local politics, I've only seen it be used to delay progressive policies and multifamily housing.
Like mandatory housing affordability, the Burke-Gilman missing link, the Fort Lawton affordable housing, etc.
I commend your work on this issue to reform SEPA and urge you to pass legislation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Aska Jax.
Thank you, good evening.
I am a renter in low-income housing in District 3. My representative is Shama Savant.
I speak from the heart every time I come here.
I'm powerful.
I care about housing and environment.
We need to save and build safe, affordable, low-income housing that is permanent and publicly owned especially for us that are intersexed who are very marginalized and not accepted in regular housing.
So please pass this for us intersex folks.
Thank you.
Next is Michael Chazen, followed by Angela Compton.
Greetings Council, my name is Michael Chosen.
I am a downtown resident living in a 30-story condominium community, a community of 575 stakeholders.
That's density.
I am fearful that we are creating a dysfunctional city.
I am urging you to reject this council bill.
It takes us in the wrong direction.
Four years ago, I was standing in the 16-foot-wide 19th Century Alley that bisects the length of our block.
I was having a conversation with a UPS driver who was blocking it.
He described to me his difficulties.
He explained how there were city blocks.
that were so hard to access that he had to double park two blocks away and run his packages to their destination, frequently returning to a ticket on his truck.
Seattle's Department of Transportation, in their collaboration with the University of Washington, on a study entitled The Final 50 Feet, has chronicled and analyzed these types of problems.
I live on a block that could become the densest and most dysfunctional block in the city, yet developers are not compelled to solve the SEPA-related design issues that have been raised concerning the proposals on two 500-foot towers.
For nearly five years, I have been observing and lending public comment at SDCI's design review process on these two projects.
What I initially concluded was incompetence by the Volunteer Design Review Panel and SDCI, I've now concluded it's outright contempt for the public interest and stakeholders.
SDCI has a process that invites this comment and then promptly ignores it.
What sense does that make?
After advancing SEPA pertinent related traffic and daylighting studies at our own expense, our community's expense, SDCI has completely ignored our community's input.
I can't imagine providing more substantive public comment than we have.
We have packed the design review meetings.
Every frustrated commuter and resident stakeholder interested in these issues we're raising has a stake.
Thank you, Michael.
Next is Angela Compton.
Hello, Council.
Thank you guys for being here today.
My name is Angela Compton.
I'm a resident of District 7, and I'm here today to support SEPA reform.
I live a life that most people only dream of living.
I have a job that I really love, working actually at a housing nonprofit.
And I have a 10-minute walk to work.
I live in Belltown.
There's lots of shops nearby, lots of different stores.
I can walk to Pike Place Market.
That's actually where I do my grocery shopping.
And this isn't the life that most people live.
Most people in my office at the Rainier Tower all commute in.
It takes them one, maybe two hours to get into work.
And they don't have the opportunity to live the kind of green life that I live.
And a big part of that is that there are a lot of environmental things that are being used by SEPA that aren't, shouldn't be.
One of them, for example, is parking, as we just heard with the greenest building in the world.
They even were subject to a SEPA reform on parking.
I advocated for the Mandatory Housing Affordability Act and heard time and time again ridiculous things about parking and other things that just should not be related to the environment.
What we should be worried about is sprawl and what's happening in our communities related to sprawl.
When you look at Issaquah, like even five years ago, Issaquah was mostly a forest, and now there are just so many homes all the way out there, and all of those people are commuting to Seattle and to Bellevue, and we need to be building more homes here.
And so I really support the SEPA reform.
I really support it in that is protecting our environment and also allowing for more homes to be built in green dense ways and allowing for more people to live green lives and hopefully have short walks to work or a quick transit trip.
So, thank you.
Thank you.
Next on our list is Kari Nathan followed by Pam Halpern.
Kari Nathan?
No?
Moving on to Pam Halpern.
I'm sorry?
Okay.
Last on our list is Matt Hutchins.
All right.
Good evening, everybody.
Let's see.
Thank you very much for your time on this issue.
I want to start off by saying that the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects strongly supports Council Bill 119600 to align the city's SEPA requirements with recent changes to state law.
And there's a letter.
I think you've already seen that.
SEPA is a powerful tool.
We don't want to take anything away from that.
It has shaped this place that we love and protected the environment, and it's doing a great job for the most part.
We don't want this to compromise any current environmental protections.
In fact, because a lot of these environmental protections are duplicated, with functionally equivalent development codes for noise, pollution, etc.
Having this be recovered by SEPA is redundant.
Building more places for people to live in Seattle and living our environmental values are not at all at odds.
We can protect the environment and provide access to housing and economic growth and vitality.
These are not mutually exclusive.
Allowing more housing into existing neighborhoods results in less greenhouse gas emissions per capita, and the diversity of housing options at various price points enriches our neighborhoods and makes communities more resilient.
Recently, SEPA appeals have been used to delay much-needed changes from Fort Lawton, ADUs, affordable houses, bike lanes, et cetera, et cetera.
And, you know, as we face more climate change and potential inequity from our booming economy, it's all the more important to to limit the SEPA appeals.
We support SEPA appeal exemptions for upzoning around transit, allowing duplexes, triplexes and apartments in residential neighborhoods and increasing infill development and subdivision of lots into small parcels, all those things are great.
They have huge, massive environmental benefits and we should be integrating them into our zoning to make them more green.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Is there anyone who did not sign up to speak that would like to speak?
Seeing that there is no one, we will be closing public comment.
I want to thank everyone who took out time from their evening tonight to join us and share their feedback on the important issue.
The plus committee meeting will be taking the legislation back up at our next meeting this Wednesday at noon here in council chambers.
We plan to vote on the legislation and any amendments out of committee that day.
A final city council vote is planned for Monday, October 7th.
This concludes the October 9th, 2019 meeting of the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee, we are adjourned.