Seattle City Council Briefing 8/8/2022

Please.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is August 8, 2022. And we are going to have council briefing.

I'm going to ask that council briefing, please come to order.

And the time is 201. And Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Peterson?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Nelson.

Council President Juarez.

Here.

And Council Member Nelson.

I see your tile.

Me too.

Present.

Thank you, seven present.

Thank you very much.

We'll move to the approval of the minutes.

There is no objections.

The minutes of August 1st, 2022 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection or seeing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Before I go on to the president's report, I want to wish a very big happy birthday to my dear nephew, Luca.

His name is also known as Soldier Holdfast.

So happy birthday, Luca, that year went by really fast.

All right, president's report on today's agenda, council member Morales will circulate one proclamation recognizing a fellow neighborhood activist, Mona Lee.

This proclamation was distributed to your offices last week for your review and comment.

Following the signing of the proclamation, we will receive a briefing on Monkeypox by Dr. Matthew Golden from Seattle King County Public Health.

And finally, we will have a 30 minute executive session.

On tomorrow's agenda, the consent calendar will include the minutes and the payment of the bills, as well as 21 appointments recommended by the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

We will take one vote on all items on the consent calendar.

And as usual, unless any council member wants to pull one of those items and have it considered separately, if not, we'll just move forward on the agenda.

Following the consent calendar tomorrow, we will be considering nine items, including four items referred directly to council.

The first two items require public hearings, which we will handle individually.

The second two items are administrative in nature.

You received memos on each of these from Karina Bull on central staff last week.

Please feel free to contact Karina Bull if you have any further questions.

Following those two public hearings and votes, we will consider two items recommended by the Neighborhoods, Education and Civil Rights and Culture Committee regarding reproductive rights.

and one item recommended by the Public Assets and Homeless Committee regarding state recreation grants, and two items recommended by the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee regarding parking for truck, tractors, and utility easements.

Information on all these items are available on the online agenda.

Moving to signing of letters and proclamations.

My understanding, again, is Council Member Morales has a proclamation honoring Mona Lee for her service to Seattle's Othello neighborhood for signature.

Council Member Morales is going to lead us on this discussion and answer any questions or concerns from her colleagues.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Happy Monday.

We have a proclamation for Mona Lee, who has for the last 20 years committed her time, energy, creativity and love of Seattle's fellow neighborhood to the neighborhood, and has really been an essential part of creating the fellow park, which is Honestly, I don't know how big it is but it's a great space we hold a fellow International Festival there every year.

It's an important place for gathering and is really an essential part of the neighborhood, just a block away from the fellow light rail station.

Mona envisioned the park as a beautiful safe space and really organized neighbors to transform the park into the space that it is now designing creating funds for a stage for playground there's a basketball court it's just a really important part of the neighborhood and we are excited to be able to present this proclamation and ask for your signature.

The Othello International Festival is this coming Sunday and so the hope is to be able to actually present the proclamation to her in person at the event.

Thank you.

Are there any comments or questions or anything anyone wants to share?

Our directorate's Councilmember Morales and her proclamation?

Okay, not seeing any, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signatures affixed to the proclamation honoring Mona Lee and proclaiming August 14th, 2022 to be Mona Lee Day.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Councilmember Peterson?

Aye.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council President Morales.

Aye.

Seven signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you Council Member Morales for bringing this forward.

We'll move on to our next agenda item and that is presentation on monkeypox.

Today we'll have a brief presentation on the monkeypox outbreak given by Dr. Matthew Golden from Seattle King County Public Health.

There will be some time allotted at the end of the presentation for a short question and answer period.

In addition, Dr. Golden provided a one pager on monkey box last week, which was distributed to each council member by Council Member Herbold's office.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I'd like to invite Council Member Herbold to introduce Dr. Golden and welcome him for coming.

Go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much and thank you, Madam President, for bringing a request to bring in our public health.

partners to share their expertise to update councilmembers and viewing public on the local monkeypox outbreak.

As mentioned, I sent an update from public health to all councilmembers on Friday.

I hope that information was helpful in preparing for this briefing today.

I'm very glad to welcome and introduce Dr. Matthew Golden, who is joining us this afternoon to provide the briefing.

Dr. Golden is a University of Washington professor of medicine and allergy and infectious diseases and an adjunct professor of epidemiology.

He's director of the HIV STD program at Seattle King County, and he also directs King County's sexual health clinic at Harborview.

Dr. Golden, thank you so much for being with us here today.

Thank you.

Appreciate you taking the time to talk.

Can you see my slides?

No.

Is it enabled for me there?

Let's try this.

How about now?

Yep.

There we go.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Great.

So I'll just start giving a little background about monkeypox.

So this is what's called an orthopoxvirus.

It's related to smallpox and vaccinia, which is what we use to immunize for smallpox traditionally.

Now monkeypox is what's called a zoonosis, which is to say it's an infection that usually affects animals.

The animal reservoir is thought to be rodents in sub-Saharan Africa.

In monkeypox, that name is actually a bit of a misnomer.

Monkeys, like humans, are really accidental hosts for this.

So the monkeys don't get it commonly any more than humans typically have gotten it.

We have had prior monkey virus outbreaks.

This was first identified in the 1950s.

There've been sporadic outbreaks primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa since that time.

And it's thought that the increasing transmission of this virus is related to the discontinuation of smallpox immunizations in the 1970s and 80s when smallpox was eradicated.

So we end up having a population which is no longer has that protection.

What we face now is a global epidemic of monkeypox.

The first case was identified in the United Kingdom on May 7th.

And as of earlier this week, we had over 27,000 confirmed cases scattered all over the world, as you can see on this slide.

We've had over 7,500 cases in the United States confirmed to date.

In King County, we've had as of today, 155 confirmed cases.

All of the cases in King County so far, for which we have data, have occurred in men who have sex with men.

However, we do know that there's been at least one case in Snohomish which occurred in a woman, and the infection is not by its very nature confined to MSM.

Indeed, past outbreaks have not been concentrated in MSM.

We do have an epidemic which is disproportionately affecting the Latinx community.

27% of the cases have occurred in Latinx MSM despite the fact that only approximately 10% of the county's population is Latinx.

This virus is currently primarily being transmitted human to human.

It occurs through direct contact with an infected lesion or fluids, although it is possible to transmit this virus from contaminated materials like bedding or clothing, or from mother to child.

While theoretically it could be transmitted in respiratory droplets, that does not appear to be a common mode of transmission at present.

Monkeypox is a sexually transmissible infection.

And there's been a certain amount of controversy about this idea, mostly, I think, in the media.

It's important to realize that many infections we don't think of as being STIs are sometimes transmitted through sex.

So Ebola virus, or Zika virus, or some of the bacteria that cause diarrhea can be sexually transmitted.

At the same time, many of the infections that probably mostly you guys think of as being sexually transmitted are not always sexually transmitted.

We know this virus is present in saliva, it's present in rectal specimens, it's present in semen.

And in the current outbreak, the vast majority of the cases are transmitted through intimate contact, including sex.

In terms of how people present, most people are gonna present with a rash.

The most common right now is a rash on the genitals or in the anorectal area.

Many people will have a flu-like illness before they get the rash, although sometimes that occur concurrent with the rash.

And the sores then become diffused.

So they'll be on the chest, on the back, on the arms.

They can really be on the face, really almost anywhere.

Many people will have a sore throat.

Rectal pain is a common symptom.

In general, this is a self-limited infection, which is to say that people are gonna get better no matter what you do.

There have been no deaths associated with monkeypox to date in the United States, although there have been a small number of deaths, primarily in immunocompromised patients in other countries.

But this is not a pleasant infection.

The sores are painful.

It can potentially be scarring.

Some of them get super infected.

The patients do not feel well when they have this infection.

But I'd also point out that asymptomatic infections occur.

We don't know how often they occur, and we don't know how big a role they're playing in the overall transmission of this virus.

I figured I wouldn't show you a lot of pictures.

It's just in the right place for that sort of thing.

But this just gives you a sense of what these look like.

They start out as sort of these little bumps, these little vesicles.

And they evolve over time in a way depicted on this slide.

And I think I probably won't belabor the clinical presentation so much.

So what is public health doing about this?

Well, we're doing our epidemiologic investigations.

We're tracking this, the number of cases, the trends, where it's occurring, and the disparities.

We're doing case and contact investigations to identify people who've been exposed and ensure that people are getting the care they need and are going into isolation as required or as advised.

We have a communications campaign affecting both the general public and medical providers to alert them to what the symptoms are, the prevention, the treatment.

Here, it's been very important to have clear communications with the population that is most affected, which are gay, bisexual, and other minority sexual.

And balancing that with more widespread messaging.

We've opened up a call center or we have a call center to answer people's questions or prefer them for clinical care and immunization.

And through all this, we've really had to strike this delicate balance between not stigmatizing anybody and being sure that our communications are clear and accurate and reaching the population which is most effective.

We've been promoting testing, treatment, and immunization with guidance for community medical providers and the promotion of testing capacity.

And we have been important direct providers of testing, treatment, and immunization at our sexual health clinic and at community vaccine events as of this week.

So in order to diagnose this, you have to do a PCR test.

I suspect most of you are familiar with PCR because of COVID.

Everyone is an infectious disease expert now.

Initially, the testing was all being done through the state public health lab.

Each lab had to be, each test had to be approved individually.

This was a problem, but we are now up and running testing at the University of Washington and at the larger commercial labs.

It should really improve access to test.

That said, our testing is still way too limited.

It is very important that clinicians have a low threshold to test people so that we can diagnose everyone who's infected.

We do have a treatment.

The treatment is a drug called Ticobaramate or TPOX.

Now this is an investigational new drug.

And because it's an investigational new drug, it's governed by certain rules according to CDC.

That ends up meaning that the availability of the drug is limited to approved prescribers and a small number of pharmacies.

Initially, the paperwork burden associated with treating people was very big.

It has been scaled back by CDC, which has made it better.

The drug appears to be safe, but its efficacy is not well established.

The data really only come from a monkey model.

We don't have human data on this drug, but it's really anecdotal that it works.

I think that for those of us who've been treating patients, some people feel that it really has helped them, but it's a little hard to know for sure.

We're working in public health to expand the number of healthcare organizations that have access to this drug.

We currently have 90 prescribers approved, but it is important that the drug become more widely available.

Immunization is a key part of our strategy.

Now we have two vaccines.

We have a vaccine called ACAM2000.

That's the old smallpox vaccine or a variant on that old smallpox vaccine.

That's a live replication-competent vaccine.

What that means is that you can transmit from the vaccination site to somebody else.

It's not a very safe vaccine by current standards, and we aren't using it.

Instead, what we're using is something called the Geniostats.

This is not a replication-competent vaccine, so it's much safer.

You have to get two doses.

based on dose and a second dose, ideally at 28 days.

It's FDA approved, but we really don't have good data on the effectiveness of the vaccine in humans.

We know from older data with the old smallpax vaccine appeared to be about 85% effective against the older strains of monkeypox for which it was studied.

So these are the populations that we're currently focusing vaccine on.

We do not have an adequate vaccine supply, and I'll get into that in a minute.

So we're gonna immunize people who have a known exposure to somebody with monkeypox, and then people who are gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men, or transgender people have sex with men, who have one of the risk factors under B here.

So more than 10 sex partners in the last three months.

A history of syphilis or gonorrhea in the last year.

Men who have used methamphetamine, those who have been to a bathhouse or other public sex venue, or been involved with group sex in the last three months.

and people who are experiencing homelessness and are living in congregate settings.

And that last one is really about ensuring that we don't get outbreaks in congregate settings.

It would be very challenging to manage.

I expect that these criteria will change as our vaccine supply increases or in response to changes in the epidemiology of this infection.

So this slide is just showing you our supply.

The supply issue is a big problem.

To date, we have either received or will receive 9,109 doses of vaccine.

So far, we've administered or distributed almost 4,100 doses of vaccine, and we got another 4,400 doses of vaccine this month.

There are roughly 60,000 gay, bisexual, other men who have sex with men in King County.

We think about a third of that population is at elevated risk for a month.

That would mean we need 40,000 doses of vaccine to give all those men two doses if we perfectly targeted this.

We only have 23% of that target amount of vaccine.

So we do not have enough vaccine to reach everyone that we need.

This is what we've been doing so far.

So the first column is the initial phase of vaccine.

We had 4,770 doses.

The largest proportion of that vaccine was distributed to the sexual health clinic.

That's where I'm sitting right now.

And I get that picture you can see on the right there.

It's a picture I just took.

I blurred people out so you can't see who they are.

Outside the clinic one morning, we have people lined up, 100, 150 people every morning by the time we wake up, by the time we get to the clinic.

We're administering about 350 doses a day in the sexual health clinic.

This is a clinic that traditionally 400 people today in order to provide this vaccine.

We're distributing to community medical providers.

So far we've distributed to 15 medical providers.

That will increase as our vaccine supply increases.

We had our first community vaccine event over the weekend.

It was very successful.

Approximately we had over 600 people get immunized.

We'll have additional events as time goes on.

So where we're at is we are confronting a pandemic of monkey bugs.

At present, it is highly concentrated in gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, and in many ways has the characteristics of a sexually transmitted infection.

We are making progress in testing, treatment, and immunization, but we need to make all of those things more widely available.

Our vaccine supply remains an important limitation.

And I think the outbreak highlights the need to build and sustain public health infrastructure, particularly in the areas of emergency preparedness and sexual health.

I'm happy to try to answer questions if you have them, or I'm interested in your comments.

Are there any questions that we have for Dr. Golden while he's here from the PowerPoint?

Go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right, I just needed to get myself off mute, and I was putting my finger up before to let you know that I was working on it.

Thank you so much, Dr. Golden, for being here with us.

Two questions about the supply.

If you could speak to what is slowing down the distribution of vaccine at the federal level and what we can do locally.

to advocate to get more vaccine here.

And secondly, and I caught the tail end of a story today, and I may not have gotten it correctly, but I thought I heard that there is some exploration of the delivery method, changing the delivery method of the vaccine so it will go further.

and be able to serve more people.

Yeah.

In terms of the limited supply, I think some of the challenges, unfortunately, we were not adequately prepared at the mission.

We had a large supply of vaccine.

My understanding is that a substantial amount of it expired and we didn't replenish our stock.

We also did not immediately mobilize the vaccine we had available to us, some of which was in Denmark, and we did not work as quickly as we might have to get access to the vaccine that was potentially available to us.

So those are all challenges and I think at some level they're in the path.

I do think that the feds are working hard now to expand access to the vaccine.

I believe what you were referring to just now was would it be possible to put more doses of vaccine into a single vial which might make it faster to get the vaccine into a distributable format.

And it seems like a reasonable idea to me, but I'm not sort of involved in the logistics of that.

I don't think it would be a problem for us to administer the vaccine from a multidose vial.

It wouldn't be a problem.

the sort of the question of prevention.

What I think I heard you say is monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease, but it is a sexually transmittable disease.

So there's a distinction there.

And tell me if I heard that wrong, but also could you give us some guidance for the viewing public and anybody who we work with on how someone who is worried about contracting monkeypox can think about their own risk and how to decrease their risk?

Sure.

So I think that in terms of decreasing one's risk, we all make our own decisions in our lives about how much risk we're willing to take.

Insofar as this is transmitted to intimate contact, people who are at elevated risk can make a decision to have fewer interactions with people, fewer partners.

I don't think that this requires a permanent, lifelong change in one's behavior.

Some of this is about, can we make some changes in the short term until we have an adequate vaccine supply and we can get that into the population?

I think that's an important option.

Obviously, we want people who have symptoms to get evaluated as quickly as possible so that they can get treatment and so they also can avoid transmitting to other people and going to isolation to the extent that that's required.

So clinical care plays a role in this.

For much of the population, I think the risk, at present at least, is quite low.

And so part of what we're asking people to do is allow us to focus the provision of vaccine on the population at greatest risk.

So it is important that we concentrate our prevention efforts and our scarce resource on the people who really need it.

Thank you, Dr. Golden.

Council Member Herbold, did you have any follow-up?

Because I see Council Member Morales has her hand up.

Please do move on.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Oh, I just realized I have been off mute.

My apologies if I was making too much noise.

So following up quickly on Council Member Herbold's question, I heard a similar press story about being able to stretch the vaccine.

And my recollection is that was If the vaccine was administered subcutaneously, then less of it was needed for each dosage.

And so there was a question about whether for now, anyway, that was how it should be administered.

For our purposes, it sounds like regardless, we still don't have enough vaccine.

My question is about how we are preparing to reach high risk populations who speak other languages?

And if you have any information about how public health is beginning that process of sharing the information for folks who don't speak English?

Yeah, that's critically important.

So we are trying to communicate through the channels we already have working with community based organizations and others to reach in particular the Latinx population.

So we, you know, In part, actually, because of my experience with HIV, we do have some partners, particularly in the MSM community, where we can do this.

And so we do have a communication strategy that's focused on this, much of which is also about working with our community partners.

Thank you.

Is there a follow-up, Councilor Morales?

Are you OK?

You good?

Dr. Golden, I have a few questions, and they're just basic from your PowerPoint.

Does the vaccine have to be refrigerated like we did with COVID?

It has to be refrigerated, but not in those ultra-cold freezers like you have to do.

So it's a little more forgiving than what we were up against with the mRNA vaccines and COVID.

And I was going to ask you about, so I'm guessing this is the first time that the United States has declared monkeypox a public health emergency.

I believe that's true.

Yes.

OK, I see.

Councilmember Nelson is up on deck.

Did you have a question?

Yes, and it has to do with it seems that there's understanding about the limited supply of vaccine, and I was just reading a An article that came out from the Kaiser Family Foundation on July 29 and it's, it says, quote, among the many factors that may be influencing supply at the local level is whether jurisdictions are requesting the vaccines.

allocated to them.

And it says the majority of jurisdictions, talking about states, 37 have requested their full allocation of vaccine, including 11 that have requested 100% and 26 that have requested even more than their allocated amount.

And the remaining 19 jurisdictions have requested less than their share, including 10 that have requested 50% or less, and that includes Washington.

So I don't know how you or our officials at the state decide how much to request, but I just throw that out there.

Asking for how we are deciding what to ask for, and is there room to grow in that?

Right.

I saw the same article.

And my understanding is that we have requested at this point all the vaccine that we're able to get.

So the vaccine requests go from the state to CBC.

King County does not have a direct funding relationship to the Centers for Disease Control.

But I think we've asked for it all.

I think one important way to increase our vaccine supply is we need to use all the vaccine we get.

And we have to document that we used all the vaccine that we've got.

because that will influence how much vaccine we're gonna get in the next round.

I'd also say, not that I wanna game any kind of system or anything like that, is when you diagnose more cases, that's a factor which influences what your allocation is.

So the success in testing people and diagnosing them will influence our success in getting vaccine.

Got it.

So it so it's a testing push right now.

And thank you, Frank, for saying that, because I was wondering, what is fair share?

Is that based on population or now you say it's based on positive results, I suppose.

Right.

It's a combination of the size of your population, your case counts or rates.

Thank you.

Councilor Nelson, do you have any follow up before we go to Councilor Morales?

That's it.

Thank you.

Councilor Morales.

Thank you.

I apologize if you said this and I missed it, but can you talk about the duration of the illness and what long-term effects there might be?

I mean, this is a pandemic, but it's not the deadly COVID pandemic, is that?

That's absolutely right.

I think that's a very important point for everyone to realize.

This is not COVID and it's not HIV.

People are going to recover.

almost everyone will recover within four weeks.

A small number of people will have a more serious infection.

As I said, to date, we have not had deaths in the United States.

There have been a small number of deaths in other countries.

Other variants of this virus have been associated with higher mortality, but we don't seem to be seeing that now here.

I think, you know, beyond sort of the unpleasantness of the infection, there is some risk that people will have scars.

There are some people who will get more complicated infections in terms of super infections or pneumonia or central nervous system problems.

We don't know how often people are going to get scars.

I think that's a very legitimate concern for patients to have, particularly when you start getting lesions on your face.

I think there are complications, but it's not a, It's not like COVID with relatively high case fatality rate, or at least in some populations where you saw a lot of mortality.

That doesn't seem to be what's going on.

Dr. Golden, I'm sorry, customer Morales, are you?

Do you have any follow up?

I'm done.

Thank you.

Thank you for the viewing public and for us.

And I'm sure we'll all put it on our websites.

Can you recommend where people can go to learn more about monkeypox and vaccination and the King County Board of Health?

public health authority.

So then we can put all that information together and then we'll talk about whether or not we have you back.

I'm sure customer Herbold will be in charge of that.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Mr. Dr. Golden.

Sure.

Well, I think the probably the best source would be to look at the public health county website.

And you'll see there that there's a link to a monkey box where you can see what we're doing.

And that'll also link you into CDC data and things along those lines.

Are you meeting with other elected bodies, municipalities, cities?

I don't think I've met with other electeds.

I feel like I have a lot of monkey box meetings, but not so much with elected officials.

Well, I'm asking because I know that two of our council members serve on the King County Board of Health, and not everyone tunes into that.

So I didn't know if other municipalities or cities are asking King County to come present to their elected body to get out to the constituents where to go and how to manage this and have more information.

But we'll certainly be welcome to have you back.

Yeah.

Dr. Eric Chow and Dr. Chase Cannon, I know, presented to the Board of Health, I think, about a week and a half ago.

OK.

All right.

Are there any questions we have?

Any more questions we have for Dr. Golden?

All right.

Not seeing any.

Dr. Golden, thank you so much for being here today.

And Casper Herbold, thank you and your staff for providing us with the memo and the information.

And I'm guessing we'll have some kind of follow up maybe later on down the road.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you for that and your staff.

All right.

So let's move on in our agenda to the next item, and that is our preview of City Council actions.

Today, the lineup is we'll start with Casper Mosqueda, Casper Peterson, Casper Herbold, Councilor Lewis, Councilor Morales, Councilor Nelson, and then myself, Councilor Mosqueda.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning.

Good morning, Council President Goodmorning for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Thanks to central staff for the robust summary on those and also to Council Member Lewis who had the aquarium folks in his committee on parks and public assets recently as well.

There are three bills related to cannabis equity legislation for briefing discussion, and it does say possible vote.

There will be some amendments for your consideration in full transparency.

I always want to put possible vote on there just in case folks feel like voting.

But the intention is to have a discussion about the amendments, and there will be an opportunity for a vote on both amendments and full passage at the next meeting.

So again, please do read through the legislation.

Three bills have been transmitted to us from the mayor's office.

I want to thank the mayor for his partnership in this effort and thanks as well to the team that has been coming to our finance and housing committee meeting to brief us on the concepts.

including as recently as last month.

Colleagues, again, you'll see some amendments, and if you do have other amendments after you read the legislation that I believe is already published and you would like to see an amendment, please let central and staff know on Friday after you get a chance to hear a walkthrough of the three pieces of legislation.

Colleagues, also many of you have heard that the Economic and Revenue Forecast meeting did take place this morning.

This is our third meeting of the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council.

This council includes myself as chair, Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harold as vice chair, I want to thank the city budget office and the FAS director as members of the revenue forecast council, newly created revenue forecast council.

The purpose of this is to receive the office of economic revenue forecast projections for revenue updates.

I'm going to pass it over to We are excited to be able to share some of the projections into today's presentation.

By way of reminder, what we do is we hear the information, we receive the forecast and the council chooses to either accept the forecast or if they would like to vote on an alternative.

Today we did choose to accept the forecast as presented by the office of economic and revenue forecast personnel and we then give central staff and the So then in our August 17th meeting, you will have a fuller picture of both revenue and expenses.

And then after that presentation, we will then have a better assessment of what the bottom line is, if you will, where we see projections for expenses going versus what revenue is coming in.

So again, do tune in.

to the August 17th meeting for the fuller picture of revenue and expenses.

And I want to thank the members of the forecast council and also the economic and revenue forecast team for their presentation.

And my hope is that this continues to provide that transparency and accountability and public engagement that we were really hoping for in creating this office and truly to be able to receive information in real time with the executive.

So both the legislative and the executive branch received information on revenue projections together at the same time.

In terms of updates on the calendar, I want to tell you how excited I was to be able to participate in the National Local Progress convening last week.

Like I am a board member of the National League of Cities and the Association of Washington Cities, I am also a member, a board member of Local Progress.

And as a board member of Local Progress, I flew out early to Denver to make sure that we were able to participate fully in the board meeting.

as well as the national convening.

For the record, I noted that I was gonna be gone on August 2nd in our July 12th meeting.

My office also bought tickets for this last week to go to Denver way back on April 22nd, 2022. Again, bought tickets on April 22nd, 2022. So a full two and a half months before any agenda was published for last week's proceedings and before any legislation was transmitted by the mayor's office for the council's consideration.

I take my absences from council very seriously.

Taking time off, of course, to be with family like anyone should do in any business or any workplace, in any industry, it is important to do that.

But I did take a day off to be with family in July.

I was also sick one day in June.

And in January, I was not participating in the full council because during that third week of January, my daughter's daycare class had a COVID outbreak.

And yes, I did take the day off to be with her and take care of her during this time.

So I wanted to make sure I just put that out there because it's really important for folks to be able to take time, but also I wanted to note for the record that all of my absences I do take seriously, and especially on August 2nd, had bought those tickets to go to Denver way back on April 22nd.

I'm also very glad that I was able to join colleagues in Denver from around the country and including Canada, so I'll consider it an international conference.

In addition to joining the national convening at the local progress board meeting, we had the chance to to celebrate historic wins, 10 years of the local progress entity's creation.

I know Councilmember Herbold in her previous role as well as her current role has had a long time of participation in local progress.

There was a lot to celebrate this last convention.

In red states and in blue states, we talked about the purpose.

of local jurisdictions really being able to speak up, promote housing density, worker protection, small business, economic resilience, and how both in red and blue states, cities are fighting back on bad preemptions that limit cities' abilities to address growing inequalities and disparities, and also where we can partner with state legislators to create floor preemptions and things like housing and worker standards.

It was a really wonderful opportunity for us to celebrate not just what is going on in our cities, but to learn from each other.

For example, delegates from the local progress convening had the opportunity to go on the stars tour to see how alternatives to policing were working in Denver, a program that we've highlighted a number of times here.

I was pleased to be with colleagues, my colleagues here, Council Member Morales and Council Member Herbold.

We also were joined by a huge delegation from Washington, from SeaTac, Peter Kwan, Burien, Hugo Garcia, from Spokane, Zach Saffone, from Pierce County Commission, Ryan Mello from the Hospital District Commission, Dustin Lambrou, and from the City of Auburn, Kate Baldwin, and many more, along with other folks from Vancouver and Olympia who were intending to come but couldn't due to last minute conflicts.

and a huge crew of staff, so it was really wonderful to see folks.

And I just want to highlight for my colleagues here today and for community members, one of the really exciting opportunities for us to talk about the growth in Local Progress is that we went from under 200 people attending our annual convening in 2019 to this year having over 350 participants.

If you're interested in learning more about Local Progress as a local elected, you can go to localprogress.org and sign up for newsletters or sign up to be a member.

and be part of the national effort to have cities be that frontline of offense and last line of defense and reproductive justice, environmental justice, worker protections, housing, and building an economy that works for all.

I also have to say that the real big highlight for me as well was to be able to be in the room with my colleagues as we celebrated how we have been pushing back on large corporate influences, both in elections and policy, and lifting up worker protections I had the chance to set the stage and introduce President Chris Smalls, who is the Amazon Labor Union president.

And we said, just like at Trader Joe's, just like at Starbucks Workers United, the Amazon Labor Union is really a grassroots organizing worker led movement that helps to make sure that we are listening to those on the front line, pushing back against the injustices that they're facing, both during the times of COVID, and also fighting for better wages and benefits.

And as you may know, Chris Smalls was wrongly terminated after organizing a protest against the unsafe conditions within an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island at the height of the pandemic in 2020, much like we continue to see right now with workers who are continuing to organize across the country.

And Chris Smalls, in addition to being the Amazon Labor Union president, formed the Congress of Essential Workers, which is a national collective of essential workers and allies fighting for better working conditions, wages, and a better world.

And he continued to rally the crowd about how we can collectively call for accountability for corporations, but also work together to have workers and elected really hold these large corporations like Amazon accountable.

So that was really exciting.

I hope you all get a chance to join Local Progress and learn more.

And colleagues, today I will be leaving council briefing here a little bit early.

I'll have you on my earbuds as I commute.

But I'm going to be joining Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

She is creating a welcoming delegation for members of the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness.

in growth, and she has welcomed her colleagues here to Seattle to learn more about labor protections and labor standards in her hometown and in her district.

So with me will be obviously Council, excuse me, Congressionalwoman Pramila Jayapal, Mayor Bruce Harreld, U.S. Representative Jim Hines from Connecticut, U.S. Representative Ryan Steele from Wisconsin, U.S. Representative Gwen Moore from Wisconsin as well, U.S.

Rep. Angie Craig from Minnesota, Noel Fraim, our own 36th Legislative District State Rep, soon to be Senator, and we'll have representation from OIR as well, thanks to Michelle Nance.

And again, this is for the Economic Disparity and Fairness Growth Conduct Field hearings around the country that are happening.

Representative Jayapal sits on this committee, and the entire delegation is setting up meetings field district meetings to be held in each of the congressional members district to learn more about labor policy and labor interventions.

So I look forward to lifting up much of what my colleagues did on council before I got here, like minimum wage and sick leave.

Also, what council member Herbold and Lewis are leading on with gig work and to highlight some of the things that I've done in my time.

and sponsored with your support as well, such as domestic workers, hotel workers, banning some minimum wage, bereavement leave for city workers, rest breaks and minimum wage for app-based work and TNCs, infants at work resolution, green new jobs and buildings, workplace safety through our office of OED, Office of Employee Ombud Office, and a lot of the work that we did during COVID, Sick leave for gig workers, hazard pay, expanded sick leave during the pandemic for school and daycare closures, and the work that we're all continuing to do in the budget, over $200 million in housing and fighting for Jump Start.

directly helps our smallest businesses and creates protections for workers on the front line, like child care workers.

So with that, I will look forward to singing all of your praises and the work that we continue to do to fight for a more equitable economy here in Seattle.

Thanks to everybody for all of your work, and I'll tune in via the earbuds.

I don't see any questions, so I'm going to turn it to Council Member Nelson.

I am second to last, so.

Apologies, Council Member Nelson.

I'm handing it over to you.

Who would you like me to hand it over to?

Council Member Peterson, you look like you're ready to go.

I think the clerk had read out the order and it was a little bit out of order, but I think I was second.

I'm happy to defer to the Council President, whatever you want, obviously.

For God's sake, you're second.

great.

I'm ready to go.

Here we go.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

On tomorrow afternoon's full city council agenda, there are 23 items from last week's committee on transportation Seattle public utilities.

21 of those items are appointments to various advisory boards for transportation and Seattle public utilities, so they're on the consent calendar.

Regarding the two council bills, both passed out of committee unanimously.

Council Bill 120364 is from SDOT that will enable SDOT to designate and enforce parking for truck tractors.

We amended that bill to make sure that SDOT provides sufficient outreach going forward for any new designations.

Our committee also recommended Council Bill 120373 to enable Seattle Public Utilities to accept easements for installation, operation, and maintenance of hydrants, water mains, domestic meter vaults, Fire service meters and other equipment necessary for water utility purposes at various locations in Seattle.

Our next committee on transportation and Seattle Public Utilities is scheduled for Tuesday, August 16 at 9.30am.

On that committee agenda, we are definitely going to hear from Gregory Spotts, who is Mayor Harrell's nominee.

to become the next director of the Seattle Department of Transportation.

I'm grateful to Mayor Harrell and his team for delivering such a strong candidate for our consideration.

Our committee will consider the nomination at both the August 16 meeting and our September 6 committee meeting.

All council members are invited to attend both committee meetings for that particular item.

We're following the vetting process for all executive nominees as outlined in resolution 31868. If colleagues want to join in on the committee's formal written questions to the mayor's nominee, please send those questions to our committee clerk, Hannah Thorsen, by Thursday, August 11th.

We will be able to ask some big picture questions of the nominee at our August 16th committee meeting.

The formal answers to our specific written questions will be published before our September 6th committee.

I plan to have a vote on that second committee on September 6 for Gregory spots.

Other items on our August 16 committee, clerk file 314497 is asking us to consider a petition from real estate developers seeking to have the city vacate an alley two blocks east of the Space Needle, specifically the alley currently bounded by Thomas Street and John Street and by 6th Avenue North and Taylor Avenue North.

SDOT is also asking us to approve resolution 32063 for a term limited permit that would provide a conceptual approval to King County to construct, maintain, and operate a permanent power generator at Beach Drive Southwest, south of Benton Place Southwest.

As I understand it from central staff, this new generator would provide backup power for the combined sewer overflow infrastructure already located at that site.

Estes planning to present their annual report on the Seattle transit measure, also known as the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

That's the sales tax, extra bus service, and related projects updated by voters in November 2020. So we'll get an annual report for that.

The Cedar River pipeline owned by the city flows under Rainier Avenue South in Renton, so we'll have legislation from Seattle Public Utilities to grant easements to the city of Renton for improvements to Rainier Avenue South in that jurisdiction.

Council Bill 12034 from SDOT would transfer two parcels of property related to the South Park Bridge from King County to SDOT.

District for this past weekend I visited volunteers building tiny homes to provide to the nonprofit long housing Institute for people experiencing homelessness.

Well, several of us have visited the highly efficient production facility and Soto run by sound foundations Northwest.

This was a smaller operation with volunteers in the Wedgewood neighborhood.

They converted their driveway into a mini construction site where they build one tiny home at a time.

This weekend, the neighbors were proudly painting their fourth tiny home and plan to do more.

Last week, I also visited several neighborhood block parties in District 4 as part of the annual National Night Out, the crime prevention gatherings.

It's great to see neighbors reconnecting.

It was a lovely summer evening in Seattle.

Constituents talk with me about their personal experiences as victims of property crimes and about hearing gunshots for the first time in their neighborhoods.

They also express concerns about homelessness and are interested in forthcoming discussions at City Hall about land use and zoning.

Looks like there's a question from Councillor Lewis.

I thought we'd wait till you get finished and then take questions.

Yeah, okay, I'll keep going.

Constituents also expressed support for an environmental and public health issue I hope we can make progress on that's phasing out of gasoline fueled leaf blowers that are harmful to workers and the environment.

Had over 430 constituents took my informal survey on whether to phase out the leaf blowers, 82% said yes.

Last week, the environmental organization 350 Seattle endorsed our concept to phase out the leaf blowers in Seattle.

We now have a resolution on the introductory referral calendar that's going to be heard by the sustainability committee on August 19th.

The pandemic and other priorities have repeatedly put this issue on the back burner, but the problems and harms of gasoline-powered leaf blowers persist.

These are as we know loud and dirty gas powered leaf blowers that cause air pollution noise pollution that harm workers who use them as well as the people and animals nearby.

So to reinvigorate this process we.

had the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy and Governance.

Some graduate students completed some research.

We put together this resolution, did some additional research about other cities that have already are leapfrogging Seattle in terms of banning leaf blowers that are gas powered.

And so this resolution that is on the IRC has lots of information in the recitals.

There's also a blog post about it.

So check that out.

Happy to answer questions about that.

That concludes my report.

Any questions?

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson.

I just wanted to say that I too have had experiences in my district of neighbors who have come together to set up in-community opportunities to assemble tiny houses.

I'm really excited to hear that, as I recall, Wedgwood is the neighborhood you identified.

It's a really great way for people to get involved and be part of solving the challenges we're facing around homelessness.

and just really wanted to express that I was glad you participated in that and you and your neighbors are working on that.

It's always encouraging to hear and I look forward to continuing to extol the virtues of that kind of participation every opportunity I get.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions before I hand it over to the next person?

That would be

Council Member Nelson.

No, Herbold.

How many times we got to go through this?

It's the alphabet.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

You got one job.

All right, I'm sorry, I'm trying not to laugh here.

Very serious.

So there are no items from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on tomorrow's full council agenda.

There are two items, two bills that I'm co-sponsoring with Council Member Morales, but I know that she will cover it very well in her report, so I will say nothing more about those two items.

The Public Safety and Human Services Committee is meeting tomorrow at 9.30 a.m.

agenda items for tomorrow's meeting include nine reappointments and two appointments to the Seattle Fire Code Advisory Board.

We'll also have an introductory presentation for Gina Betz as the proposed permanent director of the Office of Police Accountability.

This will be the meeting where the executive introduces the committee to Gina Betz.

We're not gonna have an in-depth a Q&A discussion, just giving the executive the opportunity to introduce Mr. Betz and explain why they have selected him to move forward.

There is a Q&A planned for the next meeting in September, that will be September 13th.

My office circulated a draft list of questions to council members and requested your input for those questions by August 10th.

then we will circulate those written council questions to Mr. Betz.

The appointment will fill the remainder of first term of former Director Meyerberg and will go through the end of 2022. If the council approves the appointment, the mayor will send a reappointment package that can go directly to full council.

No separate process is planned because the reappointment date is so close to the appointment filling the remainder of the term.

Mr. Betz will also be appearing at a Community Peace Commission virtual community engagement meeting tomorrow evening, beginning at 7 p.m.

We'll also be receiving an update in committee from the Human Services Department on financial strengthening measures.

at the Human Services Department has been implementing over the past year.

You may recall that they previously presented on this work product in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee in December of 2021. And this is an opportunity for us to get to know more about the progress that they've made since then.

We'll be hearing a second quarter presentation from Council Central staff on Seattle Police Department's staffing budget and response, the quarterly information that the Police Department gives to the Council on those topics of staffing and budget.

And we'll be hearing Council Bill 120389, the Council Bill that addresses incentives for hiring police officers, as well as authorizing new positions in the Seattle Department of Human Resources to support recruitment and assist with the administration of police and fire exams, which can speed up the hiring process.

It is listed for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

There will be, I believe, I'm going to share those amendments with committee members as well so you don't miss them.

The staff is continuing to work with the city attorney's office to address another issue that was not fully or properly On the human services department front, I just want to announce that the department just awarded funds to six organizations through its farm-to-table support services request for proposals.

The purpose being to provide healthy, local, sustainable, and culturally relevant food and education in Seattle schools.

These awards are funded with general fund and sweetened beverage tax funding.

The Farm to Table program started in 2011 when a Southwest Seattle school preschool chef came to the Human Services Department with the challenge, help us find local culturally appropriate produce to feed our babies.

Thank you, D1.

That year, the pilot started with eight preschool and afterschool programs.

In 2022, there are now 50 Seattle preschools serving 2,000 children ages 3 to 5. The organizations chosen are Dinner Table Ideas, Family Works, Lifelong, Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority, Solid Ground, and Telth Alliance.

on the sort of updates coming up this week.

I want to flag a couple of regional committee meetings that I have coming up Thursday.

We have a watershed resource inventory area.

Area 9, that's what we sometimes refer to as WIRA 9. That meeting, in addition to approving the 2023 budget and work plan, we will also be touring the newly opened Duwamish River People's Park and Shoreline Watad in South Park.

On Friday afternoon, I will be attending the Domestic Violence Prevention Council, where I represent the council, and will be briefed on the incoming state legislative session.

We'll be hearing about a research project associated with the Domestic Violence Intervention Project, otherwise known as DVIP.

and an update on the Office of Civil Rights domestic violence work group comprised of community members to issue recommendations about alternatives to incarceration for individuals accused of misdemeanor domestic violence.

You may recall, we funded this effort at the recommendation of the Community Task Force report on the criminal legal system.

Just following up on Councilmember Mosqueda's remarks on the local progress convening.

This was a 10-year celebration focusing on resilience, power, and transformation in Denver late last week.

upwards of 350 local officials and community partners from all over the nation attended.

I want to recognize former council member Nick Licata for being a founding member together with New York City's Brad Lander.

They were founding members of Local Progress in the wake of the Occupy Movement's grassroots response to income inequality.

In 2012, it was 30 local elected officials meeting to talk about this new vision of focusing elected leaders and working to co-govern with our community advocates on issues to create more justice in our cities.

Just a couple of highlights on some of the workshops.

My staff and I toured the Support System Assisted Response Program, STAR, on non-police emergency response.

This is a team comprising clinical social workers and paramedics.

It's dispatched the calls directly by 911 dispatch without a police response.

The teams engage individuals experiencing crisis related to mental health issues, poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse.

In its first 18 months, it has successfully responded to 5,500 911 calls and has never once required a backup from law enforcement.

Our program actually credits the Denver Police Chief for leadership in helping to create this program.

Again, they started out as a co-response model, similar to what Seattle has, where at first the social workers and paramedics were going out with police officers, but they've moved away from that co-response.

They've had more than 5,000 calls since doing so and not once had to call for police assistance.

There's also a session on how to fund programs like this.

And I'm really interested in exploring how we might be able to use public safety funds in the federal infrastructure bill focused on public safety.

to support programs like this.

National organizations provided a whole lot of research showing broad support for such alternatives, providing this alternate response for people in behavioral health crisis.

Really, the feeling I got in these two sessions about alternative response is that other cities are lapping.

They're lapping the city of Seattle and we're used to being on the cutting edge moving this work forward.

So really look forward to work with council members and the executive in speeding up our efforts on creating a pilot of 9-1-1 response.

I want to also just mention there was a great session on abusive state preemption, which is increasingly attacked to suppress local multiracial organizing for progressive local goals, such as strengthening workers' rights, racial justice, gun control, environmental protections.

And we heard a lot about efforts that have successfully fought back.

And then finally, my staff attended a session and hosted a meetup.

talk about ways to protect and expand abortion access for residents in our jurisdictions, and to prepare for, in Seattle, what is anticipated to be a 385% increase in medical refugees seeking abortion that we expect.

Lastly, I just want to flag coming up this week on Wednesday, I'll be meeting with county director of Department of Community and Health Services Leo floor to discuss the county's progress on increasing behavioral health services and facilities.

The city contributed a match in funding, and the council led this effort in the budget session last fall.

The county also included a contribution to do so, and I'm really looking forward to funding more on how the progress is in using those dollars to fill this incredibly critical and urgent need.

And then, finally, on Friday evening, I will be joining the Seattle Fire Department graduation ceremony for recruit class 115, which 39 probationary firefighters will graduate, full-fledged firefighters.

So, hooray for that.

I do not have anything more to add.

It looks like Councilmember Lewis has got his hand raised.

Councilmember Lewis?

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

It's great to hear that report of your opportunity to meet with the STAR program, and I really look forward to hearing more one-on-one about your takeaways from that.

Back in the summer of 2020, when there was significant discussion about alternatives, my office hosted a virtual town hall that included a presentation from STAR and You know, I would, I think it should have been evident from then to a lot of the officials that we've been trying to work with to get these alternatives stood up of the potential and opportunity to emulate what Denver was doing.

To your point in that time, cities like Fort Worth, St. Louis, and Albuquerque have noticed and been expanding those kinds of opportunities while we continue to essentially have the same discussion over and over again.

I mostly mean inter-branch rather than as a council, to be clear.

But I hope that what you and our fellow colleagues learned on that trip can help to restart and spark a discussion that finally helps us catch up with a lot of our peer cities, be they progressive or conservative, that have realized this very fundamental reality that the future of meeting our first response capabilities is going to have to come from I think it's important for us to be able to have a conversation about.

Innovations like what they're doing it start so I just wanted to say I appreciate that part of your report.

Thank you councilmember yeah, you know we've been we've been talking about like codes like star for a while, but it we're not just being left by a a dozen cities, perhaps as many as 20 in the last two years.

And I did, my reference to the police chief in Denver's role here was intentional.

The police chief in Denver did take a leadership role in starting that program.

So I'm hoping to make some potentially useful introductions with key members in the executive.

Thank you.

Great.

Let's move along.

Mr. Lewis.

I think you got the president.

There is one item on tomorrow's full council agenda from the Public Assets and Homelessness Committee.

And that is resolution 32062 which authorizes the superintendent of Parks and Recreation to act as the authorized agent on behalf of the city of Seattle to legally bind Seattle with respect to some projects that they're pursuing for grant funding through the Recreation and Consecration Office.

This legislation was passed out of committee with a unanimous do pass recommendation following your presentation from the superintendent and some of their staff.

So we look forward to discussing this at full council tomorrow, but it was unanimously recommended by the committee.

This week, speaking of parks, I have two in-district town halls, just me and my office, to get feedback from District 7 residents or any city residents who want to come along.

Doors open to anybody interested in the Metropolitan Park District.

One of these town halls is this evening in Belltown at Block 41, and that is going to be from 5-7 PM this evening.

And another is this Thursday at the Magnolia Community Center.

And that is gonna be 5.30 to 7.30 p.m.

at the Magnolia Community Center.

So very much looking forward to hearing from folks.

We had a great time meeting at the Queen Anne Community Center about a week and a half ago.

It was a good crowd of about 30 to 35 people, where we talked about a number of different priorities for the Metropolitan Park District, including that community center itself, which made that discussion very prescient.

And I really look forward to these other two opportunities to hear from neighbors about the Metropolitan Park District.

And I think that's a good segue to discussing a couple of other upcoming opportunities.

We are going to be having two We have a number of in-person Seattle Metropolitan Park District Board Town Halls that several of you are going to be attending as more members than just myself.

One on August 15th, which will be at the Rainier Beach Community Center, and really looking forward to hearing from folks.

Both of those sessions are going to be in-person and hearing only in-person public comment.

As a reminder, there is a call-in option for all of our in-chambers Metropolitan Park District meetings and that won't change.

But this is really to give an additional opportunity to people who would rather come and give their comment in-person and do not have the flexibility to get down to Seattle City Hall.

So really looking forward to that opportunity to meet with folks first on August 15th and on September 7th.

Again, August 15th in the Rainier Valley, September 7th at Northgate.

And the details will be posted on my website and we will be sending out a press notice today if members of the press want to promote those opportunities to publicly comment.

I know the Seattle Times was gracious enough to advertise the July 14th meeting, so I wanted to provide notice for them to be able to continue to inform people about opportunities for feedback on the Metropolitan Park District.

So moving on then to libraries.

Beginning on Monday, August 8th, so today, all library meeting rooms and study rooms will be open for public use.

This restores access to our public spaces and will enable additional library programming to start taking place in person.

Library leadership will continue to monitor public health guidelines for any changes that might apply to our spaces and operations and implement them as appropriate.

We're also, I'm delighted to share that the library is announcing that the House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Uria has been selected as the 2022 Seattle Reads book selection.

Seattle Reads is the citywide book group started by the Seattle Public Library in 1998. The Seattle Reads Selection Committee began discussing potential options in March.

And after much reading and discussion, the committee members have selected the House of Broken Angels.

The Mexican-American author masterfully handles big themes of grief and death, Mexican and Mexican-American identity.

And this is a great opportunity this summer to engage in the Seattle Select Reads program.

It's available in both English and Spanish in the city's physical collection, and limited copies will also be available for informal borrowing, meaning you don't need to check out the copies through the formal process.

The author will visit Seattle October 19th to 20th for three public events, and we will keep you posted as the events are finalized.

Finally, we are changing open hours at the library to take advantage of the cooler morning temperatures.

So in non air conditioned locations.

By the time a branch opens at 1pm, it may already be past the threshold and opening for an hour can frustrate patrons and staff.

So this is a way to make sure that we can take advantage of those cooler morning temperatures for more programming in the library.

And we are really looking forward to that service.

So check with your local branch to see if there are more morning hours available.

Otherwise, Council President, I do not have any additional updates, so I can pass it on to Council Member Morales.

Yay!

Good job, Council Member Lewis.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

We've got a lot going on in my committee.

On tomorrow's full council agenda, I'll be bringing Council Bill 120356 to extend the interim regulations for FEMA's flood insurance program.

This is coming from would have gone through the land use committee, but we need to pass it quickly.

So I do, I asked Kato Freeman from central staff to join us if folks have questions, but just so you know, the background on this is that in July, 2020, we passed and the mayor signed ordinance 126113, which would establish interim floodplain development regulations in the floodplain maps, the updated maps.

They've been extended twice and are due to expire August 18, which is just next week.

So if it's not extended properties property owners in FEMA floodplain areas may not be able to purchase flood insurance or renew their existing policies.

So the reason for the extension is that the SIPA decision was appealed by the port last summer, and staff has been working on resolving those issues.

So the goal is to complete SIPA and move forward with proposed permanent regulations in the Land Use Committee next year.

But in the meantime, these regulations need to be extended.

So that is the bill that will be before us tomorrow.

And Council President, if it's okay, I might ask if there are questions about that before I move on while Ketel is here.

No, I think we're good.

Ketel's here.

Okay, so we will also have two bills from the Neighborhood Education, Civil Rights, and Culture Committee on the agenda tomorrow.

The first is Council Bill 120374, that Council Member Herbold and Council Member Strauss co-sponsored with me.

This creates civil rights protections for any individual's actual potential perceived or alleged pregnancy outcomes.

And we will also have Council Bill 120376 also co sponsored by council members her bold and stress that would expand the authority of the city to criminally charge those who impede access to or disrupt operations of healthcare facilities, including those that provide abortion services or gender affirming care.

This means that people harassing or blocking a pregnant person who is seeking abortion services or a person seeking gender-affirming care could be tried either in King County Superior Court or in Seattle Municipal Court.

Both of those moved out of committee unanimously.

I do want to thank my staff, Alexis Turla and Devin Silvernail, and Council Member Herbold, Staff Christina, Councilor Boros, I don't think I got that right.

My apologies, Christina.

All very active in supporting this work with advocates and also with the city attorney's office to make sure that these get done.

The next meeting of the Neighborhood Education Committee will be this Friday, August 11 at 930. We have 11 items up for discussion.

We have first a presentation from DEEL on their racial equity toolkit analysis.

We will also have a presentation from DEEL on their annual FEPP levy amendments.

Those are in Council Bill 120398. We'll also be discussing a third piece of legislation related to abortion care.

This is Council Bill 120399, coming from my office and co-sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

This would prohibit crisis pregnancy centers from using false or misleading advertising that might result in their interfering with the person's right to seek an abortion and would also prohibit unjust data collection that puts the lives of those people in danger.

I wanna thank Christina again from Council Member Herbold's office for her hard work and partnership with our office and Gorman from central staff and work.

supporting conversations with the city attorney's office, as well as Kim Clark from Legal Voice and the ACLU for their review.

Kim Clark will be joining us on Friday to present on the harmful impacts for those experiencing a pregnancy, including legal and health implications of these crisis pregnancy centers.

Then the last few things on the agenda are appointments from the LGBTQ Commission and the Disability Commission.

All that on Friday.

Department updates this morning I met with STCI and OPCD for our land use directors meeting.

I connected with STCI on their omnibus legislation to see how we can work together on code changes that could bring essential services like fresh healthy food and other groceries within reach of neighbors who are living in resource deserts.

I also offered to connect OPCD with the coalition of 35 advocates and organizations to discuss calls coming from community members for a sixth alternative to the comprehensive plan major update.

I share the belief that seems to be held by many of our constituents that the next major update really should be transformative.

and should set us on a path to creating a city of connected neighborhoods where essential services and jobs and access to community amenities are all within a 15 minute walk or roll from home, whether it's through home ownership or nonprofit affordable housing or community ownership or high quality publicly owned social housing.

We need to be building a Seattle where boundaries of class based on class or race are really dismantled.

And so that people have a choice where they wanna live.

So we wanna make sure everyone has an access to a Seattle that's within reach.

Looking forward to continuing those conversations and to connecting the coalition of folks that we've been working with, with the OPCD staff.

This morning I met with Oira.

We learned about the Seattle Refugee Fund that was established at the start of the war against Ukraine.

The Seattle Foundation collected donations from the public, over $300,000.

They have distributed 70% of those funds to the Ukrainian Community Center for a total of $200,000.

and the remaining $128,000 was put out as an LOI.

That funding is intended to support 29 other community organizations, but they received 29 applicants for that funding.

So there's clearly huge need.

The organizations that were applying to this fund were requesting supports so that they could get supplies for their communities, whether it's medical supplies, diapers, and other baby needs, school supplies.

There's a lot of Afghan refugees who are here.

Their kids are going to be starting school again.

So huge need.

And OIRA is doing a great job of trying to connect these organizations to possible state funding for newly arrived refugees and making sure that they're connected to those opportunities.

I'm also met with deal this morning.

This week, I'll be attending a field trip with deal and with the mayor's office to Madrona elementary to see how our FEPP levy investments are working to support our K through 12. students.

There are several field trips set up so this is one that I'll be attending.

We also discussed investments from the budget actions that we had last year.

So DEEL has provided $439,000 to five pilot schools for restorative justice programming.

198,000 for culturally appropriate after school programs, and has contracting with 500 with with organizations for the $550,000 for black girls, women, trans and queer mentorship programs in the city.

Other updates.

My office actual also went to Denver last week for the local progress convening.

I was joined by two staff members.

We joined close to 400 municipal electives from across the country to share policy ideas and strategize on some of our city's most pressing challenges.

I participated on a panel on fighting for equitable transit.

My staff hosted a gathering of over two dozen people interested in or actively developing social housing policy and started to build a cohort of folks in municipal government from across the country who see the urgent need for social housing on the local level.

We also attended workshops on winning rent control, building connected walk-in and bicycle infrastructure, expanding access to reproductive health care.

My staff participated in a meeting with working families party members on how to, including Helen Jim from Philadelphia and Tiffany Caban from New York City, to build solidarity with working class constituents from across the country.

I also met several school board members who were there for the convening.

And we talked about the work we can do to sort of bridge the city and district, municipality and district divide so that we're making sure we are supporting our students and our communities.

Finally, district updates.

Last week, I held in-person office hours at the Columbia City Farmers Market.

We heard from many constituents about their excitement for social housing.

Others were expressing concern regarding sweeps of our unhoused neighbors during the heat wave.

I look forward to continuing in-person office hours at the market now that it's been expanded year round.

We will be there more regularly.

We also had our monthly Mount Baker community meeting where we heard some very serious concerns about the lack of green space in the area.

This is at the MLK and Rainier intersection.

The lack of environmental justice is really contributing to some serious health effects for folks particularly who are living in the art space lofts.

There's a lot of traffic obviously at that intersection and these housing units are for low income artists.

They are not air conditioned and they sit between the light rail station for Mount Baker and the Rainier MLK intersection.

So there's a lot of concern that there is no air conditioning, No air filtration, and so when they leave windows open during a heat wave, the apartments are really dealing with a lot of particulate matter in the kitchen on the floors, and the children who live there are having some some serious health problems so.

We need more space for kids to play in the area away from the cars.

And folks are really interested in sort of reinvigorating the conversation at SDOT around accessible mount maker improvements in the area.

So lots more work to do, obviously, but wanted to share some of the concerns that are coming from folks there.

My staff also met with the Friends of Dead Horse Canyon.

Neighbors in the south end have been volunteering their time and labor for years to maintain the trails on the canyon, hosting monthly cleanups.

And they've got some real concerns around the plans that SPU has come up with to build a road over the entire length of the canyon, which will take out about 100 trees.

that is part of a very important and very limited green space in the south end.

So we're working with Council Member Nelson's office and others who have met with our constituents.

We want to make sure that SBU is conducting meaningful stakeholder engagement there.

We also met with 350 Seattle to discuss their healthy through heat and smoke campaign and their parks levy priorities.

There's a real push to focus on building apprenticeship opportunities, particularly for Black and Brown community members in Seattle, on turning community centers into refuges from smoke and heat.

Another thing that is really important, the only four community centers in the whole city have air conditioning.

and providing engaging programs for people that are seeking refuge from the heat.

I agree that the parks levy is an important opportunity to fund climate resilience hubs and really meet the city's commitment to moving off of fossil fuels by 2030. Later this week, I'll have my monthly meeting with a little Saigon neighborhood where we're working through the pieces of the neighborhood safety model that the community has crafted.

working with D.O.N. to create CID specific in language resources for business owners and residents there.

And we've also heard similar requests from businesses across our district.

So we're going to see what we can do to put together kind of a cross-city department team to get some resources available for folks.

On Friday, I'll be touring four or five businesses in the Empire Way Plaza on MLK.

Businesses there have been facing challenges when SPD is called.

There are some language barriers for folks there, and they also feel like there's been little support for preventing crime even when SPD is present on site.

for said crimes.

So we'll be joined by Department of Neighborhoods, OED, and OIRA to talk with the business owners there about some of the challenges they're facing.

And finally, this weekend I'll be attending the Othello Park International Festival to celebrate ethnic music and art and food.

There are a variety of family activities planned and we will also be presenting Mona Lee with her proclamation at the festival.

So looking forward to being in community this weekend.

That is all I have.

Are there any questions?

don't see any.

So I will pass it on to Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I'm setting my timer.

There's nothing from the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee on the agenda tomorrow, but we do meet on August 10th and I can hardly wait because we will reveal at long last legislation to establish the Seattle Film Commission.

This will be a discussion of draft legislation and we'll discuss the introduced council bill at our next meeting after council recess on September 14th and we hope to voted out of committee then.

And, you know, this is so important to me because film is the most commercially viable art form.

And if we really want to grow our creative economy, our best bet is to have a thriving film industry because film incorporates the widest possible array of creative disciplines and living wage jobs, including jobs that don't require a college education, but that provide transferable skills and career pathways into other sectors.

So that's why it's important, but the city cannot jumpstart or juice the creative economy ourselves.

We need a commission of professionals in the film industry to help us make decisions to strengthen our film industry and attract more film production to Seattle.

And this is what stakeholders have been calling for for years.

It's what I've been working on since day one.

And the bottom line is that film is a major driver of economic development and job creation.

And a film commission will help Seattle regain its cutting edge as the nation's premier filmmaking city.

So it's especially important now because we've got $12 million in new incentive dollars from at the Washington state level.

And one of the duties of the film commission will be to help align Seattle with our county and state partners on policy and on making the best use of these incentives.

And that leads me into the next item on Wednesday's agenda, which is an OED presentation on intergovernmental film industry strategies.

And there will be a discussion which includes Kate Becker of King County and Julie Damon with Washington Filmworks.

The third item on the agenda is our second discussion and possible vote on Seattle City Lights 2022 integrated resource plan.

And the last item is a briefing and discussion of Seattle City Lights 2023 and 2024 rate ordinance.

The mayor's office will be transmitting the rate ordinance bill, which is about 60 pages long on Wednesday.

So it's not right now linked to the agenda.

The bill text will be available.

a little bit later on.

The briefing this week will provide an initial overview of the rate ordinance bill and familiarize committee members with the subject matter and give them the big picture.

A copy of the bill text will be provided as soon as it's available, and committee members will have the chance to drill down on that and follow up with specific questions at the following committee meeting on Wednesday, September 14th.

So that is all coming up this Wednesday.

And regarding meetings I took last week, on Tuesday, August 2nd, I joined Mayor Harrell and OED Deputy Director Preeti Srinidhar to announce the expansion of the tenant improvement program, expanded with $1.9 million of federal funding.

And this will help about 30 small businesses improve their existing spaces or help them move into new space.

The announcement took place at Simply Soulful's second location in the Central District at the corner of 23rd and Jackson.

And Simply Soulful, don't worry, still has its original location in Madison Valley.

But through the GIP program, they were able to secure funding on a larger space with upgraded equipment.

And it will also serve as an art gallery and community gathering spot.

So stop on by it.

I believe it is now open.

On Wednesday, August 3rd, staff received an update on addressing homelessness from a representative from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

We met with 350 Seattle to discuss the park levy and also, I mean, not the park levy, but the Seattle Parks District and also get more information on their healthy through heat and smoke campaign.

We met with representatives as Councilmember Morales already touched on.

of the Friends of Dead Horse Canyon to hear their concerns about SPUs.

The project that they were talking about that was referenced by Council Member Morales is called the Taylor Creek Restoration Project, and she already mentioned some of the issues involved there.

On Thursday, August 4th, I met with leadership to tour the Nordic Heritage Museum, the Nordic Museum, now called National Nordic Museum.

in Ballard, where we got a quick tour of their upcoming and current exhibits.

And we also discussed some public safety concerns and current and potential projects with Seattle City Light and SDOT.

And finally, I attended Seattle's fair for the first time ever, and I've lived in Seattle for 32 years.

All right, meetings coming up this week.

I will meet with Ilona Lowry, the Interim Director of GSBA.

And I'm sorry, let me start that again.

I'll be meeting with Ilona Lowry, the Interim GSBA President and CEO.

And I'll also be meeting with the Sugary Beverage Tax Advisory Board for an introduction meeting and to see how the SBT tax is working out.

We'll be meeting with Chief Harold Stoggins regarding attacks on our firefighters during calls and I will be attending the Seattle Fire Department graduation ceremony for recruit class 115. Congratulations to the 29 new upcoming graduates.

Staff will be participating tomorrow at a community conversation that the Community Police Commission is hosting with the appointee for Director of the Office of Police Accountability, Gina Betz.

That's it for me.

I'm at six minutes and 40 seconds.

Are there any questions?

All right, I now pass it to Council President Juarez.

Thank you.

So I will be brief.

There are no items from the Governance, Native Communities and Tribal Governance Committee on tomorrow's council agenda.

Last week we met with the Seattle Human Service Coalition regarding their service priorities for twenty twenty three.

That was a really good meeting and we went through their priorities and some of the other issues that were outstanding.

We also had an opportunity to meet with HSD regarding homelessness and responses in D5.

And also, we've been in discussions with the fire chief Skogans as well in the letters that we've been receiving on the assaults on our firefighters.

And finally, we recommended, I'm sorry, we welcomed our new temporary research assistant, Rob Young.

Rob is a graduate student at the UW Evans School and a former teacher and basketball coach.

So if you see Rob in the hall, please say hello.

Coming up this week, there will be another chief of police search committee meeting on Friday this week.

Also, as a reminder, our last council meeting before a two week recess will be August 16th.

There'll be no council briefing or council meetings the weeks of August 22nd and 29th and no council briefing on September 5th.

The first council meeting after recess will be Tuesday, September 6th.

Yesterday, as you all know, our four four time championship team, the sales storm, played a sold out game.

in front of over 18,000 fans and the Climate Pledge Arena, and it was wonderful.

Storm veteran Sue Bird was honored in a pregame ceremony for her 21 years on the Storm.

She will be retiring at the end of the season.

Her coach, Poki Chapman, was quoted in the Times as saying, Sue embodies that GOAT, greatest of all time spirit.

Seattle Storm will now begin the playoff series, and I hope we can all cheer for them onto their fifth national championship.

Going on to Native communities, finally, I would like to acknowledge the passing, which is very important, of a Navajo Code Talker named Samuel Sandoval, who died last month at the age of 98. During the Second World War, around 400 young men were recruited from the Navajo Nation to serve as Code Talkers with the U.S.

Marine Corps.

According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, the Code Talkers took part in every assault the Marines conducted in the Pacific.

The code, based on the then unwritten Navajo language, is credited with helping end the war.

Following his training, he served in the five combat tours and was highly decorated following his honorable discharge in 1946. Among other medals, he received a silver star for service in the Pacific Theater in lieu of five bronze stars.

After the war, he enrolled in college and earned a certificate in substance abuse counseling.

Today he's remembered for setting the standard of DNA excellence and as you know today is the true word name for the Navajo folks which is DNA.

According to his wife Malala Samuel Sandola dreamed of seeing a museum built near the Navajo Nation capital window rock Arizona to honor the code talkers.

Three of them, Thomas Begay, John Kinsell, and Peter McDonald, remain with us today.

And the reason why I share that is I don't think people know enough about the history of the Code Talkers.

And I once, 25 years ago, had an opportunity to meet with two of them as they came to Washington state to meet with our governor.

And I was very honored to sit down and visit with them and understand and learn more.

I think I will always hold that very emotional meeting to me, close to my heart, that I had the chance and the opportunity to meet two Navajo code talkers.

Okay, after that, that's the end of my report.

So we are going to go into execution.

Oh, I didn't see your hand up.

Sorry about that, Councilor Humboldt.

Okay.

I really appreciate you, Madam Chair, mentioning the next search committee meeting for the police chief next week and it reminded me that I should have included in my remarks the fact that there are two additional public meetings that have been scheduled.

There's a meeting on August 10th from 6 to 8.30 at the Holgate Street Church of Christ.

There's another on August 11th from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m.

at South Park Hall.

These additional meetings were scheduled after the five meetings that they had originally scheduled and a recognition by the consultant that's helping us do some of this engagement that we really needed to spend some additional time to hear from members of the public before moving forward on interviews and recommendations on the search committee.

So I want to flag those two additional meetings this 10th and August 11th.

Thank you.

Okay, so with that, folks, let me go ahead and read the script here for I have one.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Sorry.

I apologize for the late notice, but I request to be absent next Tuesday, August 16th at our council meeting.

I apologize.

It's last minute, but my son is leaving for college and it's been hard to pin him down on dates on the last trip.

What day?

August 16th.

Oh, and we'll do that tomorrow, council member Nelson.

We do that during.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not late.

I'm not late at all.

But thank you.

OK, so let's say is there anyone else before I try one more time?

OK, good.

All right.

So I'm going to go ahead and read the the formal script to the record so we can move into executive session.

Hearing no further business, we will now move into an executive session.

As presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene into executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.

The council's executive session is an ongoing opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with the city attorney's office as authorized by law.

A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open session.

I expect the session to last 30 minutes and Madam Clerk will give us a briefing or let us know when we're getting close to our 30 minutes.

The executive session is to be extended beyond that time.

I will announce the extension and the expected duration.

At the conclusion of the executive session, this council briefing meeting will be automatically adjourned.

The next regularly scheduled council briefing meeting is scheduled for August 15th at 2 o'clock.

All right.

With that, then we will move into executive session.