Seattle City Council Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee 6/10/20

Good morning.

The June 10th, 2020 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 AM.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Here.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Chair Strauss?

Present.

Five present.

Thank you.

I'd like to first begin by acknowledging that we are on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, and Tulalip people, past and present, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, and Tulalip peoples and tribes.

We have one item on the agenda today, the public hearing on Council Bill 119769, which the City Council adopted in April.

The next two regularly scheduled land use and neighborhood meetings are canceled due to the council's special summer budget deliberations.

The next meeting of this committee is on Wednesday, July 22nd at 9.30 AM.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Our one item of business today is the post-adoption public hearing for Council Bill 119769, also known as Ordinance 126072. As a reminder, this legislation made temporary changes to our permitting and design review processes to address the impacts of the COVID-19 emergency.

As emergency legislation, we were able to adopt it without the usual public hearing.

Noah, will you please read the item into the record?

Agenda Item 1, Emergency Permitting and Design Review Ordinance.

Thank you.

We are joined by Lish Whitson and Ketel Freeman of Council Central Staff to provide a brief overview before opening the public hearing.

Ketel may be joining us a couple minutes late, and Lish can start us off.

Lish, take it away.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great.

So this legislation, because it was adopted by emergency powers, requires a public hearing post-adoption.

That hearing is taking place today.

It affects two departments' processes.

Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection's design review program and the historic preservation and review of public institutions carried out by Department of Neighborhoods.

both in conjunction with public and community boards, which provide input.

The bill temporarily allows SDCI and DON to make some decisions that are otherwise made or informed by community boards or committees that take in-person comments at their meeting.

For the design review program, the design review boards are currently not meeting.

STCI staff are reviewing design review projects as in the board.

The bill exempts affordable housing projects from design review altogether.

Under the bill, STCI may waive some development standards for affordable housing projects if waivers result in more affordable units.

These waivers can include things like requirements for bike rooms and quantity of bike parking for affordable housing projects or requirements to the size and design of common recreational areas.

Under the bill community outreach is still performed online and written public comment taken and for the FBI staff review.

Most of these provisions apply for the earlier of a 180 days ending on October 25th.

The day fbci starts to conduct virtual meetings or the date design review boards restart meeting in public.

Other provisions such as the affordable housing project design review extension apply for the life of the bill which extends to October 20th.

For the Historic Preservation Program, Landmark Historic and Special Review Boards and Commissions, Public School Development Standard Advisory Committees, and Major Institution Citizen Advisory Committees are not meeting for two months through June 26th.

Timelines and deadlines for board approvals are on hold until these boards can meet.

DLM staff may approve certificates of approval for some changes to landmarks and structures in Historic, Landmark, and Special Review Districts.

When meetings start up again, boards are requested to take an equity lens and schedule those meetings.

And that's it.

Thank you, Lish.

And thank you for that detailed briefing.

Before we begin the open remote public hearing, I ask that everyone please be patient as we continue to learn to operate this new system in real time and navigate through the inevitable growing pains.

We are continuously looking for ways to fine-tune this process and adding new features that allow for additional means of public participation in our council meetings.

It remains the strong intent of the City Council to have public comment regularly included in public meetings.

However, the City Council does reserve the right to end or eliminate public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or unsuitable for allowing our public meetings to be conducted efficiently in a manner which is able to conduct our necessary business.

Today we are not having public comment.

We are having our public hearing, and so we are going to move right into the public hearing.

I will moderate the public hearing in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes.

To speak, I will call on one speaker at a time and in the order in which registered on the council's website.

If you have not registered yet to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public hearing by going to council's website at Seattle.gov forward slash council.

The link is also posted in today's agenda.

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

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

As a reminder, your comment should be related to ordinance 126072. If you have comments about something else that is not on today's agenda, You can always provide written comment by emailing my office.

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

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

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

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

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

The public hearing on Ordinance 126072 is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

We have listed today Megan Cruz, Martin Kaplan, and Samantha Scherer.

And clerk, if you wouldn't mind giving one extra minute to each participant, we'll go with three minutes per speaker today.

Megan Cruz.

Hello, good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm here to speak on the ordinance 126072, And I first want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak publicly, especially on a bill that has taken away the public comment at design review and hasn't offered a timeline or a sense of urgency that be reinstated.

And I hope we can figure that out today.

We all know democracy runs on public forums and not behind closed doors.

And yet this bill makes it harder for the public to understand, comment, and track the big market rate projects that affect thousands of people that are now being reviewed behind the closed doors.

I think it's been suggested that the public might have more input, but I don't see that in my dealings.

Busy planners, their time is paid for by developer's fee, and their number one job is to work with them to push a project across the finish line.

Calls and emails with planners is just not something that's commonly done.

The bill seems to be another step in the grand bargains vice grip on Seattle land use.

In four years since it was enacted, developers have predictably chosen to pay in lieu rather than build affordable housing.

They understand this model creates pressure to approve even unsustainable designs.

It doesn't welcome public input, and neighbors who call for mitigations are often viewed as obstructionists.

We know last time we spoke of this, a lot of the comments were to make this a permanent system.

I just think we need to take a step back and really reintroduce public comment When the bill was passed, the council members asked for a progress report.

We're asking today to ask central staff, what's the progress on this?

When will these virtual online meetings become a reality as they have for all the other city departments?

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Megan.

Next is Martin Kaplan followed by Samantha Sher.

Martin.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Martin Kaplan.

I'm a native Seattleite, principal of an architectural office for over four decades downtown, former Seattle Planning Commissioner, and I've been on our Queen Anne Community Council Land Use Review Committee for over 18 years.

I participated in design review and neighborhood planning really for my whole career, but formally since the mid-90s when design review was formalized.

On behalf of most of my community, I have previously delivered several letters to you regarding your suspension of public design review meeting.

On Queen Anne, our LERC has worked successfully for decades bringing together our community members and those that build our infrastructure face-to-face, making every project better for all parties.

Just if you drove down Queen Anne Avenue, and looked at a number of our projects that have been developed over the last one years, you would see courtyards, you would see infrastructure that was inspired by public comment, by meetings.

We are currently working on a huge Safeway development that we've worked on for six years.

Hundreds of people, thousands of hours have gone into this, four different developers.

And now we're getting to a place where it's getting ready to go in per permit.

And you're going to take away the right for the public to meet on this?

For over two decades, our current design review program has allowed people to input, for public input, on neighborhood decisions whose outcomes will impact and may change their communities.

Design review reflects our city council commitment to listen to and represent all your constituent opinions together with specific neighborhood goals and objectives.

With all due respect, your suspension of community design review meetings is wrong.

Let's be honest.

All of us are meeting online, and doing so in support of design review has become ubiquitous.

Our community councils meet via Zoom.

I'm talking to you via Zoom.

Our land use review committee will have two Zoom project presentations next Monday night.

You could easily accommodate a very simple design review meeting tomorrow.

And we all know that.

This is intentional.

Why not?

We all know that for decades, developers have lobbied City Hall to eliminate design review and streamline their permitting.

Absent design review on Queen Anne and in many other neighborhoods, our built environment would be determined by performance, speed, and City Hall insiders rather than respectful neighborhood-centric consideration.

Some believe that you may be using your suspension as a first step to eliminate design review altogether.

This would be a huge mistake.

Otherwise, why not migrate design review online like most other institutions?

Thank you, Martin.

And Samantha Sher, are you present?

Clerk or Noah, do we know if Samantha Scherer is present?

She is not on the list any longer.

Okay.

She was, but do not see her any longer.

We will give it just one more second.

to see if she is able to come back.

Samantha Scherer, if you can hear this, please rejoin.

We would love to give you the opportunity to speak with us this morning.

Not hearing Samantha joining, and as she was the last speaker to remotely to present at this public hearing, if any other people would like to sign up to speak, now is the time.

I'm going to give it just another moment.

Thank you, colleagues, for your patience.

I just want to ensure that we have provided the public an opportunity to join us this morning.

Not hearing Samantha joining us, that was our last speaker to remotely present to speak at this public hearing.

The public hearing on Ordinance 126072 is now closed.

Thank you for everyone who provided, Martin and Megan, for providing comment today, and to my colleagues for attending.

This concludes the June 10th meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

As a reminder, our next committee meeting will be on July 22nd, starting at 9.30 a.m.

Colleagues, do you have any items for the good of the order?

Yeah, I do.

This is Council Member Juarez.

Yes.

That's my birthday.

Happy birthday!

on July 22nd.

No, on July 22nd.

So I probably won't be there.

So just letting you know now.

We got to add a special agenda item for sure.

That's great.

Yes.

I would like public comment to include everyone singing happy birthday to me.

I'll be 29. So it's a big day.

And Mr. Chairman, I have a less auspicious good of the order as well.

But I wanted to inquire, you know, I want to thank everyone that tuned in today to give their public comment on this and other topics.

And I just wanted to inquire, Mr. Chairman, if you know at this point where we are on this, or maybe we can follow up offline.

When we passed the legislation granting SDCI the ability to do administrative administrative review or no review in some cases for design review.

We requested that they keep this committee and the council apprised of their progress in standing up the capacity for virtual meetings.

I I believe we are supposed to get a report back from the department, I wanted to inquire on what the progress of that report back is.

I know that was critical for myself and some of our colleagues in, um, in voting to, to grant what I think all of us acknowledge is a, a unique and extraordinary, um, concessions of the department to meet the, uh, the exigent needs of the moment.

Um, and, and that, you know, it is a temporary and, um, uh, a temporary policy that should not be considered to be permanent or a step in a direction towards permanent suspension of design review.

So I did want to see where we were in that process of dealing with the technical hurdles and when we can expect that report back from the department on their progress.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Yes, it is my belief, and Lish, please correct me with accurate information, it is my understanding that we were supposed to receive that report back this month, so I believe that it is in the next few weeks.

Lish, do you have a more accurate understanding?

That's my understanding as well.

So we will be following up with SDCI, because I, like you, needed to have that report back as part of this bill.

And I will be interested, and I'm waiting to hear myself what their status is.

Council Member Strauss, didn't the bill itself enumerate a deadline?

And I'm not asking that to be tricky or rhetorical.

I'm actually asking, because I don't have the bill in front of me.

But I thought that it did.

have a deadline, and I'm just curious, you know, if the anticipated report back is to meet that deadline or if we as a council have extended or if the executive has requested an extension of that deadline just in the interest of being fully transparent with the viewing public.

I'm just, I'm curious if that is the case and asking just to refresh my own recollection, but I thought it had been, the 15th of June or something like that.

But if Lish or someone could refresh my recollection on that.

Yeah, the deadline in the bill is June 20 is 60 days after its adoption.

So June 26.

Okay, thank you so much.

And as far as we know, that deadline is to be maintained, like has the executive request an extension or can the public count on an update by that time?

We haven't heard any requests for an extension, but we will make sure to be in communication with the members of the committee if such a request does come forward.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

I will also be following up with the same line of questions that you have provided this morning.

I appreciate your diligence on this issue.

Any other items for the good of the order?

Hearing none, I want to thank you again for attending.

June 10th, 2020 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is now adjourned.

Thank you.