missing title

Chair Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Excellent.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is hereby adopted.

Well, good morning again.

Welcome to our second meeting of the steps committee.

Beautiful day out today.

And welcome as well, colleagues.

I would like to wish everyone, start off by wishing everyone a very happy Black History Month.

It's a month to be proud of and celebrate.

A lot of smart black engineers made tremendous, impactful contributions to improving our broader transportation network, not just in this city, but across the globe.

So we should honor and celebrate those achievements now more than ever.

It's also an excellent opportunity for us to reflect and celebrate contributions of members of the black community more broadly as well across the United States and diving deeper here in the city of Seattle.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of speaking at a Black History Day Assembly at Genesee Hill Elementary School in West Seattle in my district.

The theme of that particular event was Black Lives Matter, Lift Every Voice and Sing.

I was amazed to go to that school and witness firsthand what truly remarkable transportation infrastructure can look like.

Directly right out front of Genesee Hill Elementary in a critical sort of egress, ingress routes, drop off, pick up location points.

The streets are blocked off, so cars are unable to pass through.

in most circumstances, meaning pedestrians, bikes, wheels.

Our most vulnerable users, indeed, starting with their children, are able to safely navigate their way to school.

There was abundance of sidewalks to and from that particular school as well.

So super cool.

And I recognize that not all schools are currently so well off and situated from a safety standpoint or even from a sidewalk standpoint.

Plenty more work to do.

All right, in our last meeting, we focused heavily on traffic safety.

Again, a core priority of steps that really underlies every single thing that this committee does.

Today, we'll pivot a little bit and start our agenda by advancing another core priority of this committee, strengthening transportation reliability and levy delivery.

We can directly advance this priority by initiating two key actions, two key moves.

One, improving oversight of levy implementation.

And two, ensuring a strong, disciplined start to levy-funded investments.

Good old-fashioned, good governance, if you will.

That's why we're here today.

And which is also why we'll be hearing directly from our partners at SDOT about levy deliverables and the department's proposed levy delivery plan for 2026. As you'll hear and learn more shortly, approximately 430 projects across all seven council districts will be funded by the transportation levy in 2026. These projects range from smaller neighborhood projects that impact a small number of people to high collision safety projects, such as one that will commence on the West Seattle Bridge, which will impact thousands and thousands of people each day.

Now, regardless of the size, each one of these projects represents an improvement and an upgrade which directly benefit our community.

Next, we will also hear from SDOT about the department's accessibility program and ADA compliance.

We will learn more about the broader efforts behind a consent decree guiding our work that our city is subject to and how those various legal requirements govern our broader accessibility initiatives.

Now, as an aside, colleagues, I would like to remind my district colleagues to kindly submit your projects that you'd like to use for our newly launched district project fund by March 1st.

That does not leverage levy funding, but it's still a cool new micro scale investment neighborhood level scale investment safety upgrade program and fund.

and we're the first sort of step in the process in order to make sure we're empowering the department and setting them up for success, we need to do our part by making every effort to meet that March 1st target.

Please work with the department, consult SDOT if you have any questions about the district project fund that we passed unanimously last year.

All right.

Moving on again, today's agenda, we'll hear a presentation from SDOT on the proposed annual levy delivery plan for 26. We'll also hear a presentation from SDOT regarding accessibility in our public rights of way, ADA and consent decree compliance.

Moving on, we'll now move on to the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we currently have three in-person speakers signed up and we do not currently have any remote speakers.

All right, thank you.

Each speaker will have approximately two minutes.

And we'll start with the only one we have right now, currently in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you kindly read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

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

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list, which is Stu Hennessy.

Good morning, council members.

Is this an icon?

I don't think it is.

Good morning, council members.

Yeah, you can start my time.

I'm here to comment on the deliverables.

What you had just said about schools.

My main focus is in the Admiral District.

On page 32 of the deliverables, it's under People Streets.

It does mention Southwest Lander Street, which is a street that is one way that crosses Lafayette Elementary School.

To explain it thoroughly, the people who do not want to go through the traffic lights along California Avenue to get to Admiral, to get to the West Seattle Bridge, they often take that side street, which is 44th or 45th Avenue, and cut through Lander, which allows them to get through past Hiawatha Park right onto Admiral, without seeing any lights at all.

This is at the same time that school's arrivals are coming, the kids are coming to school at the same time.

So it's been our proposal for some time to have that partially closed.

This would be a pedestrian plaza, and that's what I've understood this line on page 32 might be referring to a pedestrian plaza, which is usable for so many different reasons.

Further from there, we do have a ADA problem at Walker Street and California Avenues.

It's a curb on all four corners and we did a walkthrough a year and a half ago and to this day with SDOT and to this day it's still not ADA compliant.

The last thing on my list is at Barton and 18th Avenue Southwest.

That street vacation is a really good idea and I'm glad it's on the draft and I hope it goes forward.

That's all I have for today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hennessey.

Our next public comment speaker will be Jack Wisner.

Good morning, Chair Sacca and Council Members.

My name is Jack Wisner.

I live in Ballard, District 6, and I wanted to comment on item 1 of the delivery plan.

On page 27, there's an item that says that they will spend money to advance the planning of what we call the Strauss Plan for the completion of the Burke-Gillman Trail in downtown Ballard.

30% plan was released, I believe, in the summer of 2024. So between now and then, we should have learned enough that that plan is fatally flawed, that it would slow transit routes 40 and 44, which SDOT has just spent millions of dollars to speed up, and that there's a senior housing project on Larry, and they've objected to the plan.

With a mixed-use trail, it will attract dockless E devices, which are speedy, and there'll be friction between transit riders and shoppers when they're trying to use the sidewalk, and the trail will be next to them.

It's pretty clear transit will be slower because the Strauss plan called for taking away a lane between the bus stops at Ballard Avenue and 24th Avenue Northwest.

And if you go out there to the street today, you can see that's a bus lane.

And then I have one comment on item two I want SDOT and the Council to consider the impact of the dockless e-devices on ADA accessibility.

The clutter is a big hazard when they block bus stops, curb ramps, and sidewalks, especially for those who are elderly, disabled.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wozner.

Our next public comment speaker is Tyler Vasquez.

Good morning Chair Saka, Council Member Kettle, Vice Chair Rink, Council Member Lynn, and Council Member Foster.

My name is Tyler Vasquez and I am the Advocacy and Policy Officer for Cascade Bicycle Club.

I wanted to thank SDOT for all the work that went into the project list.

Additionally, I wanted to thank Council for the amendment to be able to provide the project list.

This builds public trust and transparency for those to understand what is coming up in 2026. I also want to bring attention to a corridor that is near and dear to Cascade Bicycles programs and near and dear to current news, South Henderson.

The South Henderson project is in the project list.

It provides bike lanes for those who bike or want to bike.

We partner with Bike Works, who runs an after-scare program at Rainier Beach High School and also South Shore K-8.

Those people who bike or want to are defined in that program.

These bike lanes will provide safer streets by narrowing the road, also a direct connection to the Rainier Beach light rail station.

Lastly, I want to let you all know that as a person who bikes, as a person who grew up in a community similar to the Rainier Beach community, drive-by shootings, and also shootings had me stopping my Little League games, they had me stopping my schools, and also they made me want to be an advocate because I had many questions as little Tyler.

that I couldn't answer, that my parents couldn't answer.

And as an advocate today, I ask many questions that I have the understanding of why, but I wanna answer what are the outcomes that we want in our city and how are we getting there?

And I think that's something that the project list, that's something that these big key goals can bring.

Thank you and I hope you all have a great day.

Thank you, Mr. Vasquez.

So appreciate that.

Just as an aside, Tyler is with Cascade in his day job, but he was also recently elected co-chair of the Levy Oversight Committee, which I also sent on earlier this week.

So congratulations, Tyler.

All right, anyone else?

No, we have no more public commenters.

Okay, cool.

Let's see here.

All right, let us now move on to our first substantive item of business today.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, presentation from SDOT, proposed annual levy delivery plan for 2026.

Thank you.

And as our presenters join us at the table now, please share your presentation.

Once ready in just a moment, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

But before we do that, let me just start off by kind of orienting the conversation and acknowledging some of the work here.

So what we're doing right now is going through a fairly detailed list of proposed projects that the department intends to deliver.

that would leverage levy funding as part of the $1.55 billion levy package generously approved by voters about a year and a half ago.

This is a list of a non-exclusive and a non-exhaustive list, but a fairly representative list of all the great projects the department intends to complete this year pursuant to the levy.

And this is a creature of leadership from this council writing in that requirement that we visit every year and give the department an opportunity to share with us their vision and their plans for ensuring we have a strong start to the levy.

It's also a reflection of some work from our Levy Oversight Committee who in their final report ultimately recommending a renewal of the now-expired Move Seattle levy, which is, I think, transformed into the Keep Seattle Moving levy or something along those lines, the current transportation levy.

In their final letter, there was a recommendation to have a similar reporting structure and have more transparency up front on an annual basis to better ensure our city is well-positioned to effectively deliver upon our levy commitments.

And so all this to say, but it also represents a very, as the 30-plus page document will share, I have my highlighted dog-eared version here in front of me.

It's a very detailed, comprehensive list and it represents a lot of work by the department and also a fairly significant departure from past practices.

of the department, and it also represents what I'll call a Herculean effort to plan this much far ahead and document it.

And so I acknowledge the hard work and the tremendous contributions by many, not just those at this table, to put this resource together, because of our shared commitment to accountability and transparency to voters and taxpayers.

It's much needed, and I think we're all grateful for it.

But we're also looking forward to learning more.

So welcome again, and again, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentations.

Thank you.

Council Member Zaka, I'm Bill Laborde from the Seattle Department of Transportation.

I'm Megan Hoyt, Acting Deputy Director at Seattle Department of Transportation.

Serena Lehman, Levy Manager, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Let's go back to the original.

All right, thank you again for having us here today.

I'm just gonna kick us off with some grounding, because we are really excited to be here today.

Serena and I were here at the end of last year talking a little bit about what we'd done in 25. We'll give you a little taster of that today as well.

But really, today we're here to talk about our delivery plan.

I think even just from listening to the public comment today, like every line on here has complexities and interests.

Some of them have been coming for some time.

So it really is quite an effort of both putting the list together with Serena and her team and all our program owners put together.

But it's...

There is so much complexity and wonderfulness to this plan to be able to see the things in here.

At the same time, this is just a slice of what SDOT does, because the things that are in here are just the levy-funded work that we do that is starting planning, design, or construction in 2026. So bigger, broader plans.

So we're excited to run through kind of how to read the plan, some of the considerations that go into it, and then examples of some of the projects.

I'm personally very excited too because we always know there's an endless amount of things we could do and that people would like to do.

It is hard to make the decisions of when to fund something in what year.

And I'm very interested to see what actually comes with our first year of having the district project fund around and providing another avenue for that.

So that is very exciting to us as well.

So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna give just a little kind of warm up of the kind of things that the levy delivered in 2025, just as a reminder of kind of the wide variety of projects and what we did.

And then we're gonna give an overview of how the plan itself is set up.

And then Serena is actually gonna go into a lot of the highlighted projects, some detail about them, and then we are very happy to answer.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to the person who knows so much about, you can't know everything that's in this delivery plan, but the person who comes the closest I think is Serena.

All right, thanks so much, Megan.

So as Megan mentioned, we're just gonna do a really quick overview of highlights of what we accomplished in 2025, and then we'll dive into kind of the nuts and bolts of the levy delivery plan.

So, you know, we started off 2025, the first year of our levy, you know, we started off fast.

We hit the ground running, really leaning into our experience with delivering kind of our O&M program, so being out there filling in potholes, doing our signs and markings.

We also, you know, really launched into our hiring process.

We were able to hire 50 new positions in 2025 to support overall levy delivery.

What you're seeing on these series of slides is some highlights of the types of projects.

You know, we're being out there doing like airway inspections.

You know, we were able to go and do those quick improvements to our high collision safety locations for the city to improve safety.

In addition to that hiring, we also were out there in community.

We had community walks to determine kind of where we wanted to do the sidewalks and neighborhood walkways that are so important and key to delivering on this levy.

We also were out there launching new programs like our bicycle maintenance program where we're out there replacing posts, which had new dedicated funding through this levy.

And then kind of the last little highlight I want to give in terms of 2025 is that, you know, we, and Councilmember Saka touched on this in his opening remarks, is that oversight and kind of transparency is absolutely key.

And so a key piece that we were able to hit last year was we stood up our levy oversight committee, which many of you participated in finding members for, and Councilmember Saka and staff continue to support the ongoing operations of that.

And then another key piece of launching 2025 was getting our dashboard ready to go.

So a key part of the levy ordinance was having a public dashboard that reported on a regular cadence of what we had delivered through the levy and our spending.

So we modeled our new dashboard after our previous Levy to Move Seattle dashboard based on the feedback we had received.

We engaged with the Levy Oversight Committee last year, and we have now launched our dashboard.

In the dashboard, you will find kind of what we've delivered through all of our different programs, how much we have spent through our different programs.

You'll also see lists of kind of ongoing projects, things that are in progress that we're working on.

This is updated on a quarterly basis, which will be aligned with our regular quarterly reporting we'll have through the levy.

and then last but not least, which we are very excited about is that there'll be a map of work that we have completed and we're planning on launching that in April of 2026. So you'll be able to look to see where we've been doing work throughout the city.

Great.

So now onto our levy delivery plan.

So this is the second year we have put together a levy delivery plan.

And for those who are not in it deep every single day, this plan outlines kind of where we're gonna be investing levy dollars over the course of the next year.

So it's where we're planning to be out there doing planning, design and construction work.

You know, this work is continuous.

So some of it really is focusing on where we're gonna be, not necessarily what we're going to be completing over the next year.

and this is informed by many different factors, including other things that are happening throughout the city, private construction work, what emerging priorities have come up over the last year, what we're hearing from our community.

Next slide.

So, 2026, I like to call it a special year.

You know, every year there's something happening that's different in the state of Seattle, but this year we have two big things that are gonna be impacting our city, specifically in the realm of transportation.

We're gonna have, we have a five by five that is happening right now and is likely impacting several of you here today in your travels around our city.

But then we also have the FIFA World Cup that is happening this summer, both really needed and exciting things that are happening.

What this means for overall levy delivery is it means that there's gonna be some constraints on where we can do work in our streets, especially during our dry months.

And so we're being really thoughtful when we put together this plan about just being realistic about what can we actually do while we have a lot of constraints on how people are moving around during kind of our peak construction season.

So we really focused on what can we get done this year?

Where can we get it done?

And then what can we really focus on planning and design so that we can just hit the ground running in 2027 where we can't deliver this year?

I also want to note that many projects in here are projects that can be completed within a year.

Look at some of our curb ramps and our transit spot programs, our markings, that's something that generally has a relatively quick turnaround, a year or two.

But then we do have some larger projects that are multi-year projects and you'll see those projects show up as starting planning or in design.

and they might be in that phase for one to two plus years as we are navigating our partnerships with other agencies like King County Metro, potential opportunities for additional funding or just, and then ongoing community engagement.

So the projects in here are varied and their timelines are varied as well.

When we published this plan we shared it with all of you on January 30th and at that same time we shared it with the Levy Oversight Committee and we gave a very brief presentation to them earlier this week and we'll be coming back to them in March for a deeper discussion to hear kind of their thoughts around what we have put forward.

All right, so now to the, so there's, as Council Member Sock already mentioned, there are a lot of projects in here.

We have 430 named projects, and this does not even include the thousands of O&M projects that are happening throughout the city.

I'm thinking like sidewalk safety repair, we named a handful, but there are thousands more that will be happening.

Additionally, you know, our pothole repair, our, you know, some of our spot paving work.

So you see that 430 named projects, but there's, A vast majority more that is happening, we just are not, they may get in the plan just because the level, the number of pages here would be very long.

And then we also want to highlight that there was 190 million appropriated to the overall portfolio in the 2026 budget.

In the document, you'll see outlined via our kind of our 11 primary buckets, how much was appropriated per each kind of program area.

All right, next slide.

All right, so now we're gonna move on to the fun part where we're gonna give some highlights of what you would expect to see in the plan, highlight kind of, yeah, some items that you expect to see.

So we're making investments focused on improving safety for people traveling in all modes, all around the city.

You know, we are really focusing on advancing our safety and Vision Zero goals.

This includes projects on the streets most prone to collisions, improving safe routes to school, parks and transit, and building new sidewalks, crossing improvements and protected bike lanes, and then beginning to plan major upgrades along some of our high priority corridors like Aurora Avenue North.

A lot of the work we do and a lot of the projects that we are going to be designing and building really come from working very closely with community.

And there's a few programs, the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program, low pollution neighborhoods where we'll be planning and designing and then building.

in close coordination with community.

We actually have featured South Henderson Street, which you heard about in the public comments, is also a really great example of just very extensive community work.

We're very excited to build our school safety project on South Henderson Street.

Given what happened last week, we're also working very closely with the community to find the right time to do that construction, which originally had been scheduled to start this weekend.

So that's kind of an awesome example of how we're gonna be responsive to kind of small and large projects, just what's happening in the world, and we're going to adjust accordingly.

So while we've talked about some of the new things that are coming to streets, we're also really focusing on maintaining our assets that we have, and this includes launching some of our work on our bridge program.

We've got contracts out, we're working with designers to get that going.

We're also looking at where we're getting to do our work on strategic repaving and bridge preservation and repair planning work.

We're also continuing to work on supporting our freight access and connections to the Port of Seattle.

When we think of assets, this goes beyond our paving and bridges.

As we look at kind of doing these summer larger projects, we look at how we can also maintain and build out our multimodal transportation system, including bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure.

2026 is a big year with a lot going on.

We've mentioned already the World Cup, Revive I-5 and how much we wanna keep people moving during those projects as well as really showcase the city.

So we have a lot of projects that we're trying to get done before then.

At the same time, we have like major regional transit coming.

And so a lot of our improvements are also designed to get people short-term and long-term are small and large projects connecting to light rail stations and then continuing our transit spot improvements across the city.

And so as I believe I mentioned earlier in the presentations, another thing that you'll find outside of project lists in the levy delivery plan is you'll see how much was appropriated in the budget for this year for our various levy program buckets.

So right now they are outlined in kind of our 11 primary categories and what was budgeted.

I do want to note that because projects are dynamic and things change that while we see this number appear, we don't expect to spend like 16.3 exactly on Vision Zero school neighborhood safety.

We expect there to be changes year to year based on where we are on our project delivery, what emerging needs come up.

So just want to, and this will, as we get into kind of our annual report later, we'll probably have more conversations in this space.

The district project fund is also noted on here.

It does, you have 2 million allocated of levy dollars for the year in addition to other funds that are supporting that program.

All right, so kind of what's next for us?

It looks so little, it's just one line, but we're gonna continue on levy projects.

We are currently out there.

I go out in the community and I see sidewalks being repaired and work being done as we speak.

We are gonna be engaging with the Levy Oversight Committee, as I mentioned in March, to do a deeper dive into this levy delivery plan, hear their feedback and their questions about how we're doing our work.

We've also offered briefings to all of our modal boards to brief them on the levy delivery plan, focusing on the areas that are relevant to their purview.

So we'll be at the freight advisory board this month and then the pedestrian advisory board next month to hear kind of their thoughts along with our subject matter experts within the department.

As was already mentioned, the district project fund ideas, those are due March 1st.

We're really excited to engage with all of you and kind of what that work looks like.

And then at the end of March, we'll be publishing our 2025 annual report.

And then we will be also publishing at that time our first quarterly report.

In May, we'll be publishing our first quarterly report for 2026. and so I think that is, that concludes our kind of our very high level overview of our levy delivery plan and kind of what's coming up for us and we're really excited to answer your questions today.

Awesome, thank you so much SDOT colleagues, appreciate the presentation here.

I will take chair's liberty and just kind of framing some initial discussion before we take comments, questions from my distinguished colleagues here at the dais.

First off, just wanna clarify, there are broadly, I think, 11 buckets or tranches of potential investments in terms of spending levy proceeds to build cool things or maintain cool things, in other words.

But it is also somewhat confusing, so I would encourage not a strict adherence to those categories.

There is a lot of overlap and cross-pollination that happens all the time.

So for example, we have a dedicated Vision Zero investment line item is one of the 11. That doesn't mean all the traffic safety projects and programs that we do to address road safety and our rights away are limited to that specific category of investments.

There's a lot, for example, of biking infrastructure upgrades and hardened infrastructure around some of our existing biking corridors that I think would qualify as Vision Zero investments as well.

Another example is our major road rehabilitation projects.

Under our city's complete streets policy, Whenever there is a major road rehabilitation project, and we know, colleagues, that is the most intensive of the work to repair roads that we can undertake.

The next level is sort of a shave and pave, otherwise known as a mill and overlay, where they just basically grind out the old stuff, pave over it.

That extends the life cycle for 10, 20 years, I think, maybe.

And then there's spot improvements, pothole repair.

But the most intensive form is major road rehabilitation where they dig deep.

It's also the most cost-intensive.

But under our streets or under our city's complete streets policy, whenever we undertake a major road rehabilitation project, we must sort of reimagine what the design of that street should look like to accommodate all users current and anticipated in the future.

And so that means incorporate the department and their smart traffic safety engineers incorporate best practices and engineering standards to figure out how to do that.

Often that entails, for example, narrowing the road, putting more barriers up, but it's essentially a complete re-imagining of the use of that particular stretch of road to accommodate all users safely.

And another example of this, in responding to a public comment, not in this committee, but at council meeting a week or two ago, someone commented about there's a lot of, she reached out to my office and asked that about a lot of speeding vehicles on 35th Avenue Southwest, which is a known problem area in my district.

Department has plenty of data, showing that cars regularly routinely just exceed speed limit 10, 20, 30 plus miles an hour.

And having extensive conversations with the department in my office over time.

They've done a lot to address the current design and accommodate what's doable under the current design.

But that's why in the levy, My office was able to add a stretch of that road from Morgan to Alaska to be completely renovated, repaved as part of major road rehabilitation.

So that means that as part of that design process, you're gonna figure out how to make cars slow down, how to accommodate all users, et cetera.

So that I would posit, and I think the department would agree is also a, broadly a vision zero investment.

So all I have to say is these various levy categories, they're guideposts only.

I would encourage members of the public following along, my colleagues, there were some good questions about this during our levy oversight committee earlier this week.

So they're guideposts only.

There's a lot of cross-pollination and overlap between other investment categories as a practical matter.

Comment, quick question.

I note that the department noted that you were able to hire 50 new positions and we as a council authorized the hiring of, I believe, 71 to 77 new positions to help ensure a strong start to the levy.

Do you still anticipate hiring 20 plus positions to fill that gap?

Or has the circumstances changed that you think 50 is enough

Great.

Thank you for that.

And thank you for their perspective on also Complete Streets and why some of the projects have asterisks next to them saying you see this in a lot of places.

Context matters.

Yes.

We hired as fast as we could last year.

The first process we go through is aligning what we thought we need with actually fitting it into the right classification.

And some of those have taken a little longer, kind of just to put thought, especially for the new programs.

like the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program.

So yes, all of those positions are still in process.

A lot of them are finally getting to their hiring state.

Got it.

And roughly, when do you anticipate finalizing those hires?

We can check back on all of the details.

I know there are actively, I'm gonna say at least 10 of those are getting very close.

I feel like we have some apprenticeship positions that sort of need the first step in that and that's the one we got the most delayed.

It is still a really important program for us to do to start apprenticeship for signal electricians and putting that into play is just taking us longer than we think.

So I'd say short term, quite a number of those are getting filled and then I think we just have a couple of lingering ones that we're just making sure all the right pieces so we can, and some of them we had to hire the first person first, who's gonna then pick the subsequent folks.

Got it, makes sense.

Thank you for that update.

Please do continue to keep us posted and keep the Levy Oversight Committee posted on this as well because this is actually another creature of some specific recommendations that the last iteration of Levy Oversight Committee made to help to improve, to help directly advance the goal that I mentioned at the outset, which is to ensure, or key move that I mentioned, which is to ensure a strong, rapid start to the levy.

And this is what you all put in your thoughtful levy ramp up or onboarding proposal about a year ago, and so now we just need closely track and monitor that, make sure we're well set up for success.

So thank you.

All right, that is all my questions for now, but I do welcome those of my council member colleagues starting first with council member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you so much, team from Estat.

We really appreciate the presentation and getting the overview.

It's a really exciting time to get to work on delivering on the levy, so I'm really thrilled.

I want to jump in with a couple questions on climate and resiliency.

So I'd love to hear a little bit more about the planning and the updates for the low pollution neighborhoods.

I know this has been in the works for quite a while, and my understanding is that the neighborhoods have been narrowed down, but we don't have the final set.

So instead of me trying to talk for you, why don't I ask the question?

I'd love to hear what progress has been made on selecting the neighborhoods and just where that project stands today.

Thank you for that question, Councilmember.

We are so very close to being able to share that list.

So we're just putting the very finishing touches on kind of, you know, getting all the decks in a row, making sure it's all documented.

I would expect you get to hear about that within the next month.

Thank you.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Kettle, floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair Saka.

Thank you, everyone, for being here today.

I thought your answer was going to be regarding the 20 hires that need to happen was the fact that Bill LaBoard does the work of 10 people, and then, you know, you had to adjust.

So, but no, well thank you so much for the briefing and one of the questions I have is I'm looking at creating a, you know, working with central staff and others, a city of Seattle maritime strategy because there's so many elements to our maritime city that it's not captured and we need to ensure that they're all working, you know, pulling the ore in the same direction, you know, kind of thing.

And the freight program is of great interest.

Is there anything more you can say on that?

And separately, Bill, could we maybe, you know, get with the freight program team at some point?

I'm just gonna jump in on this one too and then Serena can augment if I have missed anything.

It's an exciting time for us with the freight program as well.

In a way the levy gave sort of unprecedented new money towards new things and so a lot of the work we're doing right now is in that planning.

moment of what do we do with it.

So I think the two main things, we have the work that would be up along Leary, we have the connections to I-90, we also have the heavy hull network, so we're working very closely with the port on what does that mean for the next step for the heavy hull network, and most likely on Harbor Island.

Also at the same time, the federal grant climate is ever-changing right now.

But one thing that seems to resonate very well is Freight.

So our grants team is also doing an awful lot of work for some of the freight programs.

And so a lot of what we're doing is trying to kind of mix and match and overlap the right things.

You know, where is money for planning helpful?

Where could we jumpstart to get some construction funds for it?

So it's a, feel free to ask clarifying questions on the, because we're doing a lot of spot work, but it's also just a very intense planning year to say what's really needed and how does it all work together?

Thank you, and I would like to create a briefing.

And it's important for a maritime strategy, but it's also important in terms of creating our 15-minute city.

We have to have these Again, if stores can't get product on their shelves, you still have a food desert, for example.

And so, very important.

It's not by accident, by the way, the freight program and the, you know, I think chair would, you know, back me up on that, but that's not by accident.

If I could add one other little comment, something that came into play both for the freight projects and also for some of our bridge projects was sort of by definition, those are on a lot of really busy arterials that we wanted to be very careful about during Revive I-5 and during the World Cup.

So we also very purposely are not doing major construction on a lot of those this particular year.

That makes complete sense because the Revive I-5 is not just impacting I-5, it's impacting 99, Greenwood, any north-south kind of corridor, which in a way is a segue to my next question because I'm really interested in east-west.

and I know it's not part of the 26, because it should be completed, but do you have an update on the Bell Street East-West project, that piece, that last couple blocks of the Bell Street project?

Is that nearing completion?

Is that the one from like First to Western?

Yes.

I don't think it's levee funded, which is why you don't see it here.

I also think...

It's part of the waterfront project, but we can confirm that.

And I think a lot is happening with that, so we should just get the details and we can pass that on.

Okay, I just thought I'd ask that.

But also as a lead up to my next question, because I was given advance warning that in terms of east-west streets and coming up is the Crockett Street in District 7, specifically Queen Anne.

Is there anything on that?

I think, you know, what we're planning on doing, this has really been generated from community.

This is part of our People's Streets Public Spaces program.

And so we're working really closely with community to determine kind of what the right treatment is right there.

Generally, it's more tactical, like placemaking for people.

So I think more to come, but it was something that we're going to be working on this year.

And we're really excited to engage with folks in your district.

Okay.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Again, this is not part of the levy spending this year, but I do want to make essentially an editorial comment because there's been a lot of discussion lately in the news regarding the Convention Center and not spoken to those stories as the public safety challenges that impact the Convention Center.

And I realize another east-west corridor is Pike Pine.

and the efforts done for Pike Pine by SDOT are very important for that, so I thank you.

I don't think there's anything big right now.

I know City Light was doing some lighting projects, but I just wanted to thank that because it's really important.

These east-west corridors are really important.

It also impacts our bike connections as well, and I appreciate the work done.

Speaking of bike lanes and so forth, the connections with Seattle Center and 4th, Again, north-south is one thing, east-west or diagonals are another, so that's really important work.

And the last question or statement is, again, District 7 funds, again, kind of aside, we will definitely be using, in District 7, the Vision Zero, basically the pedestrian, bicycle safety, Vision Zero, Vision Zero world, and we pretty much have our set list so we can work on that to get ahead of the Chair's one March deadline.

So I'm on good stead with our Chair.

So thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

That is our shared agreed upon, unanimously agreed upon goal.

I wouldn't call it a deadline, but it is a goal that we worked out together, as you'll recall, and with our SDOT partners So yeah, March 1st.

Sounds like you're on track, on target.

Thank you.

By the way, panel, you weren't seeing the excitement here when the chair was looking at the pothole stats in the briefing.

I just wanted to put that out there, too.

Okay, I was gonna mention that later, but I'll just say, yes, it definitely piqued my interest, was really not only excited, but delighted.

Actually, I was tickled to see that cool stat.

In the levy, we made a commitment that essentially amounted to a service level agreement, SLA, that we will, as a city, will repair 80% minimum of potholes that reported potholes within 72 hours.

And the department, through some bold investments in pothole, including those that are in this levy, was able to deliver, go above and beyond that and fill 90% of reported potholes within 72 hours.

And I think that should be the new standard.

We're always trying to raise the bar and hold ourselves to account.

So yes, I'm tickled by that.

Love it.

All right, cool.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Vice Chair Rink, floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Department for being here today and preparing this for us.

Thank you to the Levy Oversight Committee for your continued work, and thank you to the voters for approving this levy to keep Seattle moving.

None of this will be possible without you, so thank you.

And I know there are so many who are excited about what these projects will mean for our neighborhoods, for increasing mobility around our city.

And I have a couple questions today, just thinking about the immediate term and long term more structurally.

Thinking in the immediate term, what can we expect to see in terms of pedestrianization, investments from the levy in time for FIFA?

Let's see, the forums, that takes, a lot of the things were, hopefully we got done, you know, in years prior, there's been a lot of consistent work.

I feel like the biggest things that are happening around there, there's gonna be some short-term work, more from our, like, people's streets and public spaces, near Occidental.

The longer plan would come much later.

Some very spot things on approaches.

We are getting our pedestrian lighting through the Chinatown International District.

That is underway right now.

Fortson Square is in the middle of construction and that is going to be done.

And the other efforts have really focused around activation.

So just taking our existing spaces and not trying to build big things, but more keep clean.

We have that one image of the on 3rd Avenue for activation, you know, that can really just change the tone of the space.

A lot of the things that will be happening, I believe, during World Cup, like there's the normal day when there's like a normal amount of people and things like that make a difference.

And then there's going to be moments during World Cup where like the people will make the people's street just by, you know, how many people will have.

So then just also really doing our work to provide the spaces for that where needed and how to keep traffic moving around.

Serena, is there anything specific I'm missing?

Yeah, and so we'll continue doing sidewalk repair and our curb ramps and really prioritizing those locations that would help facilitate travel in and out of downtown for the World Cup.

But it's kind of those ongoing smaller improvements that we'll be front-loading.

And as a follow-up to that, if I'm recalling, I know in previous discussions related to FIFA, there's a stated goal for how many of the visitors associated with FIFA are arriving and using and not coming in vehicles.

Do you know that figure at this time?

I can't recall it.

I don't have that off the top of my head.

It's a great goal.

I know that that's coming from the local organizing committee and so on.

And I think we all have an aspiration and also know the physical limitations of downtown.

Not everybody can drive.

And I don't think it'd be best for our community if everybody is driving here.

So just wanted to connect those dots, thinking about the investments that we can make in time for FIFA to support as many folks walking, taking the bus, using micromobility options.

is a real goal and I hope that connective tissue is there.

My next question is just related to thinking strategically a little bit about how the department is thinking about where we're spending the different buckets.

The levy across the eight years has divided up in different buckets, but of course year over year that kind of ratio of spending looks really different.

So as I was looking across and thinking and looking at some of the bike investments, it looks like we're front loading some of those bike investments there.

Can you just unpack a little bit or pull back the curtain kind of what's driving some of those decisions about how we kind of slice up the pie?

Yes, I can give you, yeah, ask follow-up questions if you have any follow-up, but I think there's some of our programs like street maintenance and modernization, which are really large corridor projects or transit corridor projects that require multi-years for delivering.

And so we are, you know, those, you'll see the spending of that, like it will be slow to start and then it will kind of, it will increase over time.

There are different elements that are outside of those that will be contributing to those.

So like the bike program is also going to be part of those large corridor improvements, which is really exciting, but you might see that spending kind of travel along that corridor project.

Some of the stuff we're front loading is the stuff that we can do quick implementation for.

So those tend to be smaller improvements because they're delivered by our crews.

And so that includes things like our crossing improvements, which are more kind of our spot programs around the city.

We are taking a look kind of at through the eight years about kind of what we call our boulders.

So like our bridge projects, our big paving projects and looking at how we can sequence those to think about impacts to community, things like FIFA and Revive i5, like other construction, light rail construction, and then seeing how those smaller elements in terms of spending sprinkle in those.

So that's, I think, what kind of drives our overall spend is gonna be those big, large projects, because those are the big dollar amounts, but we're trying to front load as much of the smaller stuff as possible.

That said, sometimes small dollar spend does not equal small impact to community.

So we have projects like some of our bike projects that aren't going to necessarily be a multimillion dollar project, but it's going to have large impact and might also take a lot of time to deliver.

So it just really varies program by program.

I hope that answers your question.

One thing to add to that is one of the reasons you saw the better bike barriers coming online almost from day one of the new levy a year ago is that it is work that our crews can deliver.

They can also deliver it in relatively bad weather compared to a lot of other work that is dependent on warm, dry weather.

Thank you all for that.

It's just helpful to kind of pull back the curtain and understand how the department is thinking about how we're balancing those investments, so thank you.

And with, I mean, I think we're all really excited about all these projects coming to fruition.

I'm curious about how we're thinking about some of the the work that's being done and the great opportunities that are there.

So how much of the work associated with all these projects is being done with in-house crews?

How much are we bidding out?

Do these projects fall under the city's community workforce agreement?

Again, these are really important investments.

We all wanna see them come to fruition, and I'm thinking about the good union jobs that come with all of these capital projects.

All right, that's a good question.

We have a lot of ways of delivering, and we have different staff who work.

We can go faster when it's in-house design, in-house delivery.

That is the place.

Anything that can go that route, that's where a lot of the hiring happened.

That is absolutely a place we focus a lot.

We're able to do some of the big capital projects also with in-house delivery.

Once we get up to that $5 million threshold, we definitely have community workforce agreements for our contractor work and are trying to build that in.

Just because of the bulk of how much we're starting up, we absolutely are also at the same time using consultants to help with design, construction management.

We've built so many projects at the end of the Move Seattle Levee, so some of them are still in construction, and so we didn't have enough humans, say, to do the construction management.

It's that balance between hiring for the surge moment.

So I think some of the surge right now is kind of planning and design for these really big things, and we still have a little bit in the construction management.

But to the extent we can, we are doing things in-house.

Fabulous.

And my last question today, I know this discussion is really focused on all the projects associated with levy investments.

And as you mentioned, the department is engaged in all kinds of other work, not necessarily associated with levy funds.

But I'm wondering, how does the department consider when we have multiple projects happening within the same area and there may be a multiplier effect?

happening when we have multiple blocks of sidewalk that can be down because of a few different projects happening and how that can impact, you know, in the temporary term mobility for residents.

How is the department kind of handling and working on coordinating that?

Actually, as Serena was talking about how some of those big boulders get scheduled, things we were thinking about when we were trying to schedule those was like, do they already just have a big project come by because we really don't wanna, the construction fatigue is a real thing and kind of not understanding when we're back, oh, here you are next year, now you're touching this.

Partly by us doing this work, by Serena's team really starting us thinking further and further ahead, that is helping a lot because then we can find out, oh wait, I'm going to be in that area too.

It might make sense to have two or three things become a bigger thing.

That actually really relates to your workforce question too though because when you have a lot of little things that kind of glom together to a big thing, then you're going out with a contractor often instead of our crews.

So constant balance, constant conversation.

Something that we have, it's related, we talked about it during the levy, tied into a few programs, but the idea of the geo-teams representatives starting to give a more non-transactional way of engaging with the community, not just about a specific project, that is also really gonna help us inform some of our staging.

A lot of our outreach and engagement, we do it in so many different ways.

A lot of it is tied to a project, so we're coming ask questions about a very particular thing and building up our ability to really understand how one thing, they don't have to be in the same place to have impact.

Something that's happening blocks away or further down a corridor can have big impacts, so that's a skill we're actively working on.

So right now it's a little more of the blunt like we're just asking a lot of questions and trying to get the lay of the land and as we build our sense of being able to coordinate more years in advance and kind of understand, we'll consistently hone.

But that is a reason why sometimes you see something in a plan and then you see it the next year and we're at the same place and that's because it didn't make sense to keep it on that trajectory given other things that were happening.

Thank you.

Thank you all for answering my questions and thank you Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Appreciate your thoughtful questions there.

Two quick comments from my perspective.

Great questions on the workforce and the opportunity for our city as part of the levy staffing and spending to hire more of our labor partners.

Good, union, fair, living wage jobs.

I just note that the Pothole Ranger team, who amongst duties filling and repairing potholes, they also help with sidewalk repair, amongst other things.

They are proud members of LAUNA.

And so I think many of the frontline crews delivering this in-house, from an in-house perspective, are labor partners as well.

and then great question on the FIFA readiness and prep.

Rest assured Vice Chair, later this year, we will likely in the spring, we'll have a dedicated agenda item to specifically discuss FIFA prep planning and readiness.

We'll invite our partners from SDOT, some other community partners as well, likely King County Metro and figure out the plan to expand bus service so we can meet these goals, whatever they are, whatever the goals are.

Scooter corrals, all those things.

So in any event, thank you, Vice Chair, Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Chair.

You mentioned potential delay for the Henderson Street project.

Could you just talk about what the plan was, if there are any, and we can take this offline later, but if there is anything more, you could just share on the timing or whether there might be any potential changes to scope or public safety related lighting or other issues that are coming to the forefront.

Absolutely.

And I wouldn't say like pause with a capital P.

We are gonna stay positioned to start that project.

We were starting with some signal work.

That's the first thing that's gonna happen.

And then when we get good weather windows, we're sometimes able to get other things built.

So we were doing some of the advanced work.

So during spring, we could take advantage.

It was not gonna happen in a weekend.

This was gonna be extended over weeks and months.

So we'll have staff actually out doing a walk this Friday to see if there's anything more, anything shorter term, when it feels like the right time to actually start that construction.

Some of the things we were going to do with the signals were lead pedestrian intervals and things that would increase pedestrian safety.

potentially be helpful and might still be wanted pretty soon.

So we're just happy to adapt to whatever the timing feels right.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

A couple quick ones from my perspective.

Thank you, colleagues, for your thoughtful questions.

Answered quite a few of mine, but I still have.

or more, one just wanna note on the bridge work, the advanced design stages for Ballard, Fremont and University bridges, just I love bridges and geek out about them regularly.

So let's keep up the work on bridge maintenance and separately we're gonna invite you all back later this year sometime to focus solely on bridge maintenance status and needs.

So we'll do a deeper dive on that, but appreciate the work, your hard work so far on bridges.

Okay, the transit passenger safety line item.

Can you talk a little bit more about the department's efforts to use levy and non-levy funds to boost transit safety this year?

Okay, let me just get to that right page, because I get ambassadors and transit safety officers mixed up.

Okay, great.

So continuing the work we did last year in funding, the team has been providing some extra investment to transit safety officers.

And in particular, Metro has a lot of these people already.

They are around deployed in various parts of the city.

What we were able to do with our money was to suggest focus areas.

for that, for instance, the South Jackson corridor on 3rd Avenue.

And so we have proposed continuing that investment for the six months of the year.

We have research underway about what actually moves the needle on safety, like what makes people feel safe.

And the team's gonna be doing a lot of work this year to help inform what our 2027 investment is gonna be for transit safety based on what we hear from different communities, especially youth about what we can do best to help that.

Thank you.

I would caution you as you undertake research on what actually makes people safe, don't recreate the wheel, don't duplicate efforts because the King County Regional Transit Safety Task Force literally has a very comprehensive, robust list.

They already did the work.

and it reflected more than just each individual member city that participated in that.

And that was, colleagues, as you'll recall, one of the outputs from the tragic murder in 24 of King County Metro Bus Operator Sean Yim.

you know, there was a regional transit safety task force that was put together, representatives from all cities, all stakeholders and they have, there's literally a shiny report.

And so I would caution you not to like spin your wheels too much on research and duplicating efforts, instead focus on figuring out how we can implement those recommendations in the Seattle way from a local perspective.

Great, thank you for bringing that up.

The work they would do is actually informed directly.

They had pulled from the regional task force plan and especially the focus on engaging with youth around, so it is less research and more actually bringing in a bit more how some of our people's streets and public spaces and some of our more community-centered work, but yeah, just trying to calibrate what we're doing, but thank you for bringing up the task force.

Awesome, awesome, thank you.

Let's see here, just quick note on page 21 of the document on one of the new, wanna call out and highlight one of the specific new sidewalk investments being constructed this year, the last bullet there.

on at the top of that page, Southwest Hudson Street between Delridge and 26th Avenue.

That is an item that my office, since I took office two years ago, have been strongly advocating for and pushing the department to do.

And so we've been unblocking and providing unblocking and tackling assistance, removing barriers, including by providing funding.

And so all I have to say, really glad to see, but more importantly, community has long requested this particular sidewalk under our 2024 Seattle Transportation Plan that we approved as a council two years ago now.

and all the objective evaluation criteria for selecting new sidewalks.

It checks every single box from safe routes to schools to equity considerations, historically disadvantaged neighborhoods, all the safe routes to transit, all the things.

And also it's right in front of the Disabled American Veterans Organization in West Seattle, a veteran services organization.

many disabled veterans regularly obviously visit.

So I'm really, really excited to see that.

So thank you for delivering that this year.

Question on the good governance and equitable implementation category of investments, more specifically the property tax relief outreach and education.

Can you talk a little bit more about the department status and efforts there?

And I'll just say from the, The author's intent from when we wrote that up a couple years ago was that at the time this was the singular largest investment in levy in Seattle's history, has since been superseded by the recently generously voter approved FEP levy.

This is over eight years.

The FEP is six years.

At the same time, it coincided with recent re-changing to the classification of who becomes eligible for additional property tax relief services at both the state and the county level.

And so we want to help empower people and connect them with these cool existing programs and resources, given that unique combination of factors.

And so what we envisioned was education pieces, mailers potentially, digital, just reaching out, human services at senior centers, whatever, talking to people.

In any event, can you talk a little bit more about how you're bringing that to life this year?

Yep, I can talk a little bit about that.

So right now we're working with other city agencies as well as the county to see what is already being doing, what is already being done and looking at kind of the best way to leverage existing touch points to support kind of this outreach and engagement for property tax.

You know, there's, yeah, that is kind of our general approach and there'll be more to come in a public way later this year.

But we are working with our other, like HSD for instance, to see kind of what their best practices are in doing that work.

Sure thing, thank you for that.

Please do keep us posted and it might make sense because we have the FEP levy and another, at least one more pending levy this year, like kind of harmonize and, you know, connects.

It's not just limited to the transportation levy.

So, all right, final comment on an item.

a very important strategic work stream that was intentionally structured and designed to be stood up in connection with the levy, and that is the Financial Funding Task Force.

When we pass that, colleagues, as you'll recall, or just to refresh, if you weren't on council at that time, some of the transportation advocates were calling at the time for a $3 billion levy and which by the way didn't include bridges, and mindful of the increasing costs and sensitivity around that and the broader affordability crisis.

Where we landed was the compromise approach was a $1.55 billion levy, but we also recognized at the time that even if we had a $3 billion levy, it still wouldn't meet the need to help us deliver on three critical asset classes, bridges, the overall state of our roads, so pavement conditions, and last but not least, addressing our missing sidewalk network, so constructing new sidewalks.

And we provided a transformational generational investment in building new sidewalks, for example, the then executive had a very generous investment of $60 million and we doubled it on this floor and it's still not enough.

So we put together this task force backed by resources including consulting and legal services potentially to help vet these ideas and recommendations that flow from this task force to ensure that the ideas are not just well-intended ideas but truly actionable and implementable financial funding strategies to help us better achieve, again, you know, specific targets for those three asset classes, roads, bridges, and new sidewalks.

We are going to, I've invited the department to come, just give us a quick update about that work stream at our very next steps meeting in two weeks.

So we're just gonna check in about that, but we'll definitely wanna, there are already some sort of past due deliverables and recommendations from there.

We need to keep the momentum going.

So we'll wanna consider that and make sure that task force has actually stood up later this year, but we're gonna just check in about it in two weeks.

So stay tuned.

Councilmember Kittle, go ahead.

Final question on this.

Thank you.

I skipped over this, but your mention of bridges.

I just wanted to ask about the Magnolia Bridge in and of itself.

Very important.

And tied to that is the emergency access road because as everyone knows, we're past due on the Magnolia Bridge.

and that can come down anytime and emergency access is really important from emergency preparedness point of view.

For those that don't know, basically connecting the marina up underneath, near the bridge, below the Magnolia Boulevard to where the beach is as you come down out of Magnolia Village.

And so I just wanted to check on it because in some ways that should be the first thing, because again, we don't know what's gonna happen with that bridge, particularly if there's an earthquake, but there's also the maintenance issues and so forth.

Thank you.

I can say we do have a traffic engineer actively looking at that right now, our traffic engineering team using some of the concepts that came out of the Magnolia bridge replacement study.

What I don't have, and Bill, I don't know if you have is the actual ETA on when we're getting the answer back from them.

I know it's a very active item,

Yeah, I know that that traffic engineer is working on the planning, trying to figure out the feasibility of the route.

It really only came up as an idea during the bridge study public outreach.

It wasn't, you know, a formal adopted plan or anything like that.

It was essentially revived by the levy.

But, you know, we were able to sort of dig up that information from that outreach that goes back to 2017, 2018 the traffic engineer is looking at it he works with the port a lot and so he's you know there's port property involved and so trying to sort of figure out the feasibility right now of of that of that concept and you know I'd say at least within the next few months we could probably just you know provide you a briefing on where that stands and what he's what he's learning from that from that work okay great thank you

Thank you, excellent discussion colleagues.

Appreciate your very thoughtful questions and comments and strong engagement on this very important topic.

If there are no final questions, comments from my colleagues, we will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Agenda item two, presentation from SDOT, accessibility in our public right of way, ADA and consent decree compliance.

All right, thank you.

And will our newest presenters please join us at the table?

And when you're ready, introduce yourselves and begin your presentations.

Hey, good afternoon.

Good morning, everyone.

Jim Curtin, Director of Project Development for the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Tom Hewitt and I'm SDOT's ADA coordinator and program manager.

I think our time is a little truncated here today, so I'm going to Get the mic over to Tom here as quick as possible.

As I mentioned, I manage the project development division within SDOT.

We have a lot of the modal programs, so our ped team, our bike team, folks looking at some of our bigger corridor projects.

We have our freight group in that group as well, but ADA also resides.

in project development.

And Tom is our subject matter expert on the matter, and he advises not just SDOT, but really the city as a whole, and really has an awesome handle on all things ADA.

And with that, I will turn it over to Tom to go through the presentation we have for you today.

Tom?

Thank you, Jim.

Thank you, council members.

Today, we really want to go over this really important program within SDOT, and like Jim said, within the city of Seattle.

First and foremost, we want to ground in our Title II responsibilities and go over the requirements, again, not only for SDOT, but for the entire city in general.

We'll go over SDOT's ADA program, our mission, scope, and the composition of our team.

We'll talk about the Reynoldson Consent Decree, which is very important in this discussion, the requirements therein, and then also discuss our ADA transition plan.

So before we get into the program, I really want to ground us in talking about building an accessible Seattle, because after all, accessibility is a civil right.

About a quarter of the population has a disability at some point in their life, and SDOT is responsible for all accessibility within the public right of way.

and that also has funding requirements on as well.

So federal and state funding can come from ADA requirements.

But I also wanna ground and understand that it's beyond just basic compliance.

We wanna achieve a universal design approach, build streets and sidewalks that are built for everybody so people can age in place and we can have a more pedestrian-friendly Seattle.

but I can't go without talking about our legal framework starting with the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, specifically Title II.

So the premise of the ADA Title II is that within the city of Seattle and SDOT is that we have to operate each program, service, or activity in viewed in its entirety that is readily accessible and usable by people with disabilities.

So that means we can't exclude anybody from participation in any of our services, activities, or programs.

So in addition to Title II requirements, there are past court cases, specifically Barden for City of Sacramento, California in 2022, or sorry, 2002, that determined that the pedestrian right of way, including sidewalks and curb ramps, falls under program access requirements under the ADA.

So we have these requirements.

In addition, we'll go into the details of the Reynolds Consent Decree.

This was a consent decree that was back in 2017 that I'll go into some details on those specifics and those requirements that we have to fulfill every year.

Before I do that, I want to talk about the ADA program's mission and scope.

So our mission is simple.

Number one, first and foremost, the ADA program, if it had an origin story, it would be the consent decree.

It was formed as a result of the requirements and the commitments from the settlement agreement.

Beyond the consent decree, however, the ADA program intakes public requests pertaining to ADA and accessibility issues in the public right-of-way.

We work to remove barriers to access via inspections of existing public facilities and develop projects to improve accessibility.

We're also the subject matter experts for the organization on all things ADA, like Jim mentioned.

We develop policies, we develop guidance documents, and training to support SDOT and accessibility in the city right of way.

And first, and your last, but certainly not least, we listen to the disability community and work on innovative approaches to improve accessibility in the public right of way and go beyond minimum compliance with a focus on universal design.

So while our mission is simple, our scope is vast in what we have to do.

So with ADA program management, as the ADA coordinator, I oversee all activities within the ADA program.

In addition, I work with all the other ADA coordinators in the city, as well as the city attorney's office to address complaints, remove barriers, and improve accessibility for everyone.

I listen to the disability community and a forum through our pedestrian access advisory committee.

We meet quarterly every year, and we discuss issues and develop projects from those issues.

The ADA program, again, started with the beginning of the consent decree, and it was really primarily focused on curb ramp delivery.

However, over my four years in SDOT, I've identified three key focus areas and developed specific teams within the program to address each aspect, from customer service to planning and project prioritization, all the way through to design and inspection of accessible pedestrian infrastructure.

And we'll go into each of those teams in this presentation.

So first, our customer experience team intakes a variety of ADA requests, which can be upwards of 600 requests every year.

While the program does not directly act on many of these, we coordinate with other divisions and responsible teams to assure that ADA accessibility and compliance is met.

For example, this includes sidewalk barrier removal requests and maintenance activities such as uplifts or overgrown vegetation.

The requests we do have control over include curb ramps and accessible pedestrian signals or APS.

Like I mentioned, we also utilize requests and feedback from the disability community, specifically with the PAC.

We research best practices for developing projects and efforts to support accessible pedestrian infrastructure, such as tactile walking surface indicators.

The image on the right actually shows one of our customer experience managers surveying a participant with a new tactile treatment in the U District light rail station, right next to the light rail station.

Second, we have our planning and project management team.

This is a team that intakes requests and develops projects specifically related to curb ramps, but also other accessibility improvements and barrier removal projects as part of our ADA transition plan efforts.

For example, we designed and constructed an accessible passenger loading zone adjacent to an elementary school for a student who had mobility issues.

This team also handles our main program, our customer service request curb ramp program, which is a requirement of the consent decree, as well as coordination of all curb ramp improvements from other SDOT projects, which I'll discuss in a few slides.

And last, but certainly not least, is our design, review, and inspections team, who provides technical subject matter expertise on all things ADA and accessible design.

We provide training to all SDOT staff for ADA compliance, specifically related to curb ramps.

We also have a mobile inspection app called CREA, our curb ramp inspection app, which is used by anyone who inspects curb ramps within the city of Seattle, and it's a requirement of the consent decree.

This group also inspects facilities for compliance, reviews plans and documents needed to approve curb ramps.

So all the projects that you heard about in the levy committee, those are projects that we review for accessibility and including maximum extent feasible documentation.

So it's no surprise that building curb ramps in the city of Seattle can be difficult given the existing developed facilities and the topography challenges.

So my team and I make sure each curb ramp is built compliant or compliant to the maximum extent feasible.

Now we'll go into the overview of the Reynolds Consent Decree.

So this is an 18-year consent decree for not only SDOT, but the City of Seattle in general.

And there are specific requirements with the agreement ending in 2035. So back in 2014, like many jurisdictions, not enough attention was paid to curb ramps and accessibility in the public right-of-way.

So after years of negotiation, this agreement was finalized, again, back in 2017, and goes for 18 years until 2035. So while SDOT specifically manages aspects of the Consent Decree with coordination from the City Attorney's Office, the Consent Decree applies to the City of Seattle and not just SDOT.

So as a result, all entities working in the right-of-way must incorporate the tools and requirements and processes that we've developed in order to make sure that we're complying with not only the ADA but the Reynolds and Consent Decree as well.

So that includes anything from Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light, and even private developers.

Anybody who's touching the right-of-way has to make sure they're complying with the consent decree.

It takes a team to support compliance with this consent decree.

And over the years, we have improved our tools and processes to deliver and track curb ramp improvements, including annual requirements, reporting, and oversight.

So let's get into the terms of the settlement.

At a minimum annually, we have to deliver 1,250 curb ramps a year.

Out of those 1,250 curb ramps, a minimum 150 have to be related directly to customer service requests on a first-come, first-served basis, as needed.

We also have ADA self-evaluation and transition plan requirement that's within the consent decree, as well as ADA staff training, in particular using our curb ramp inspection app CREA that I just mentioned.

We have quarterly meetings with the plaintiff's counsel and the named plaintiffs, and we have to provide an annual report.

And last but not least, the consent decree requires an ADA coordinator, so hence why I'm here right now.

Regarding the customer service request program, our main program within the ADA program, we get over 600 requests annually, 50 of them specific to customer service requests.

So on average, we get about 50 requests just for curb ramps alone.

However, in past years, for example, in 2024, we had 91 requests for 277 curb ramps.

So this is a three-year process with intake starting and then going into survey.

So we need to get all the, you know, the survey points.

So then that's in year one.

By year two, we do the design.

And then in year three, we do the construction and approval and inspections.

So historically, we'll construct between 150 to 170 curb ramps annually, averaging about 156 CSRs, we call them, a year.

So since 2017, SDOT has delivered or permitted 11,609 curb ramps.

About two thirds of them being delivered by SDOT directly via SDOT projects.

So with the other third being private developers and utility companies that are triggering curb ramp requirements.

On average as well, SDOT delivers or permits 1,352 curb ramps, so about 100 more than what we're legally required to do based on the consent decree.

And then lastly, about a third of the curb ramps we approve are constructed to the maximum extent feasible.

Again, we live in a city with a lot of existing facilities.

a lot of topography challenges so we want to make sure if these curb ramps aren't built exactly to ADA requirements they're built to the maximum extent feasible and we have to justify that so each curb ramp has documentation as to why it cannot be built per compliance.

Lastly, I'll get into our ADA transition plan.

So this is an evaluation of existing accessible barriers and a plan to remediate impediments to accessibility.

So I mentioned this a few times.

Our last plan was developed in December 2020, And so this is another Title II requirement that all municipal governments, all Title II entities, state and local governments, over 50 people, are required to have a transition plan.

And this, because SDOT is such a large organization, this is a subset of the citywide transition plan that we work with, with our Title II ADA coordinator for the city and the program compliance manager.

And what a transition plan entails is, number one, it's an inventory of existing barriers.

So it's identification of existing physical obstacles.

We have to develop a prioritized schedule for when barriers will be eliminated and deficiencies will be corrected, a description of methods that will be used to make those facilities accessible with our standards and best practices, and then identifying the person responsible, which would be me.

One of the most important things is public participation.

A lot of folks here, and I firmly believe the saying, nothing without us about us.

And so getting feedback from the community is critical, from the disability community, so that we can develop projects that are specific to the needs of people with disabilities in Seattle.

A lot of times, you know, with our transition plan, we coordinate with other projects, with levee projects, with any other neighborhood projects or any other projects that are going in that are improving pedestrian facilities, and those count for transition plan efforts as well.

But the main crux of the transition plan is so that there are areas that don't get left behind.

So, for example, if we're paving, if we're having a major repaving project and there might be a community center a few blocks to the west or something like that and there's an inaccessible sidewalk, we would want to come in and develop a project that would then, you know, go along with the sidewalk improvements for that major paving project so that we can then, you know, folks can access that community center using transit, using the sidewalk and whatnot.

So currently the status of our transition plan, we're right now finalizing a public survey.

And so in 2026, we're gonna be putting out a public survey and then followed by focus groups and listening sessions.

We're gonna be using our PAC, our Pedestrian Access Advisory Committee, as well as other city partners, such as the Department of Neighborhoods community liaisons to obtain feedback on priority destinations and any barriers to access.

Then in late 2026 to 2027, we'll look at a prioritization overlay and develop additional self-evaluation efforts because we can't fix something if we don't know if there's a barrier there.

We also include updates to our standard plans.

We're working with our folks in SPU and internally to update standard plans.

We have updates to our Streets Illustrated, our Right-of-Way Improvements Manual, and working with our Transportation Equity Framework and our Seattle Transportation Plan to coordinate all these projects so we make sure that we're building in accessible Seattle.

And we're slated to develop and finalize this transition plan in 2028. And that concludes the presentation.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the presentation here.

I will have a few comments or questions rather myself, but I will open the floor to my colleagues to chime in with any comments, questions from any of your perspectives, if any.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Council member Foster.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation.

I really appreciate it and really appreciate your focus on service delivery, and I appreciate you calling out, you know, Nothing Without Us Without Us and the collaboration with the diverse disability communities and folks that we have here in Seattle.

And with that, I know a lot of the presentation today was focused on curb ramps, and I know why, given the settlement and that core area of work.

What I'm curious to hear more about, and I want to make sure I'm understanding, you talked about those 600 requests that you receive and you were saying those are 600 requests and those include curb ramps but they are not limited to, is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, and so based on that I'm curious if you can share more about what you're hearing or if there's sort of a top three concerns or trends when it comes to the requests that you're receiving from folks in the disability community.

Yeah, no, that's a very good question, Councilmember.

And I think, you know, looking at these requests, like I said, we do a lot of coordination.

You know, our program is specifically for curb ramp compliance, but we coordinate primarily with sidewalks, whether it's sidewalk maintenance in the form of uplifts, you know, and so we work with our sidewalk safety repair program to work on those complaints.

We also have maintenance issues with regards to overgrown vegetation.

So you can imagine if we have, for example, a five foot sidewalk and there's you know some berry bushes that are sticking out you know we want to make sure those are trimmed back so we keep an accessible pedestrian access route.

So I'd say our top three would be you know top two would be sidewalks you know bevels and shims as well as maintenance issues and then curb ramps would probably be our third but if you don't count that I would say accessible pedestrian signals would be our or another one outside of curb ramps.

And those are the vibrotactile functions that you have on pedestrian push buttons so that people who are blind, deafblind, or low vision can safely cross the street.

Thank you, that's incredibly helpful, I appreciate that.

And then I just, I wanna go back to a little bit around coordination, if you can speak to that a bit more.

You were sort of talking about the need to make sure you give that community center example to sort of look a little bit further down the street is sort of my takeaway from that, right?

If construction is happening, you're going, okay, can folks get all the way to this area of interest or this place where people might be wanting to go?

Can you talk about how, when you get those 600 requests, the information from those are shared with other parts of SDOT just to make sure that if they already have an existing or a planned project that those requests have the ability to get integrated into those projects.

I think we care a lot about not going back as we were just talking about in the previous presentation and also looking for those opportunities to get things done a little bit faster.

Yeah, no, that's a very good question.

And, you know, so when we are, coordination's the name of the game, you know, and so whether it's coordinating of timing of projects, whether it's coordinating of funds that we can work together on, it's really important that we work together.

And so, yes, you know, my program, specifically the curb ramp delivery, is a small piece of what we do, acting as subject matter experts.

But as we are coordinating, we want to make sure we go into an area and we touch it once.

And so, yeah, we use that feedback and we work with other partners because there's other prioritizations that, for example, sidewalk safety repair program has a prioritization.

new sidewalks has their prioritizations.

And so we want to make sure we're working with these other programs to assure that we are prioritizing the needs of people with disabilities so that they can access the places, you know, that they need to go.

And, you know, so access to transit is always important.

Access to community facilities, libraries, community centers.

These are things that we put, you know, on our very high priority list.

But like I mentioned, we are updating our ADA-specific prioritization as our transition plan update occurs.

and so that's going to be happening with our survey that we're going to be putting together.

So once we get the feedback from that, then we'll have what we're calling an ADA priority overlay.

So we don't want to reinvent the wheel.

We have a lot of great data at SDOT and a lot of good prioritization already occurring and a lot of projects, for example, with the levy that we just talked about.

So we don't want to throw another cog in the wheel.

We just want to make sure that we are not missing any gaps.

and so that's what we're doing with the ADA priority overlay and our ADA transition plan.

And again, that's stemming from the public comments that we're receiving from people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

And colleagues, I know at least one of us has a hard commitment and has to drop around noon.

So I think we'll be able to get us through by then.

but next up, actually, I'm gonna yield to Vice Chair.

You weren't in the order of operations but I would love to just call on you, Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, apologies.

Appreciate that.

Just two quick questions, mostly as clarifying points and thank you again for this really informative presentation.

I'm glad that I got a bit of a download and understanding a little bit more about this consent decree and how it's translated to work and improvements in mobility and access and accessibility for our city.

One point of clarification, I know you have a slide, I don't quite have the number, but it's a pie chart breaking down talking about permitted construction project curbs.

Per the consent decree, do these permitted construction project curbs count towards the consent decree mandate?

Okay, just one.

Anything that's built in our public right of way can count, so that's why it's crucial that it's done correctly.

So we have oversight, we have our street use division, and they have street improvement inspectors that go out that are trained by us, so that whenever they're building curb ramps and other accessible infrastructure as well, we make sure that they comply with our city standards as well as our federal requirements for accessibility.

Right, thank you for clarifying that.

And my second and last question for today is on slide 13. On the bullet point at the bottom, it states that about one-third of curb ramps are approved and constructed to the maximum extent feasible.

And so why only 29%?

I wanted to kind of dig into that a little bit more.

Well, I mean, what's that saying is that the other two thirds of the other, you know, 81% are actually built compliant.

So they're built.

So for example, one, I don't want to nerd out, but like, you know, a curb ramp is 8.3% running slope is the maximum.

But as you even go outside city council, you know, we have very steep topography so that every other requirement can be met, but we're not going to be able to meet that, that 8.3% running slope.

So in that case, that curb ramp would be built to the best that we can.

So it would be built to the maximum extent feasible.

And so we have to document all those conditions whenever we're building something that's not compliant per not only our city standards, but federal ADA requirements.

And so 29% of all of our curb ramps built are built to the best we can, and they're documented in that sense.

Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying that for me.

Thank you, Chair.

Those are my questions for today.

All right.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Councilmember Lin, floor is yours.

Thank you.

We heard a public comment earlier about just concerns about obstructions due to scooters, shared bikes.

Could you just talk a little bit about any planning around there about docking or how to address that concern?

No, that's a very good question, council member.

And so we've heard that from our pedestrian access advisory committee as well.

And so while I can't commit specifically on the shared mobility program, we have been coordinating with them as well as some of our partners in the community, such as Disability Services for the Blind and Lighthouse for the Blind to make sure that certain corridors, especially around transportation facilities, that there are the scooter corrals so that we have specific spots that are off what we call the pedestrian access route, the accessible route that's on the sidewalk.

Not only that, we are going to be testing.

We actually just got these materials.

I'm kind of excited.

A new tactile treatment that we're going to be putting around the corrals so that it is cane detectable by people with vision disabilities who are blind or low vision.

So that's a way, again, that cue for people to be able to put these devices in a parking structure, but it's not just painted off.

It actually has a tactile treatment, so we don't have people who are caning who are then going to be running into these scooters.

So we're going to be testing that out this spring, and I'm excited to see what those results yield.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Council Member Lane.

Council Member Kettle, your floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Curtin, Mr. Hewitt, and of course, Mr. Laborde, sorry, and also to the ADA program team.

I've seen them out and about.

I've engaged in conversation, and it was interesting, an engineer.

and so I really appreciate the work so please pass our thanks on that and also the thanks you talk about sidewalk shimming and bevving and all that's you know a constituent came to me and said hey out of the blue, because a tree root damages the sidewalks, some very nice asphalt came in and did the best that it could.

So there's one constituent from District 7 who says thank you very much.

My question is, and leading up to this question, first I want to thank Council Member Lynn for that question, because that's something that we're facing in terms of the streets in downtown, Belltown, South Lake Union, Uptown.

is a major issue for our residents, to include some that may be in chambers today.

But my question goes to the kind of tied to the pedestrian access committee.

It's tied to the mission and scope.

Develop and maintain an accessible Seattle public right-of-way for all.

You noted the ADA piece to this, but also the Reynoldson Consent Decree, the Consent Decree.

And I just note, that this is not just SDOT.

We really need SPD, fire, care, and HSD and other city departments also working this because of the challenges that we see on our sidewalks for many reasons related to more broader societal challenges that we're facing.

Is this something that you work with in terms of the committee, in terms of like care department, for example?

They're enabled now.

They can do much more.

There's some still restrictions, but to address those challenges or the unified care team, those challenges that we're seeing on our sidewalks, because from an ADA perspective, that's blocked just as much as it is maybe by a tree root or a e-mobility stall.

No, you're absolutely right, Councilmember.

And, you know, that's one thing we coordinate a lot, you know, not only internally within SDOT, with the care team, with other ADA coordinators.

So we want to make sure that we're listening, you know, from all different angles within the city and that we are making sure that our right-of-way is accessible and usable by everyone.

I mean, and we obviously focus on people with disabilities, but even older adults, You have, you know, parents with strollers or grocery carts.

We want to make sure that just our right of way is usable and accessible by everyone.

And that's why, you know, we put it on there.

So we, you know, the ADA is the floor, you know, it's not the ceiling.

And we try to strive to, you know, this universal design approach to make sure that, you know, all of our facilities are accessible and usable by everyone.

and so yeah, that includes temporary conditions as well.

So yeah, it's coordination at the name of the game when it comes to things like that to make sure that we're maintaining and we're assuring that there's no blockages or other impediments in the right of way.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle and a few quick comments, questions from my perspective.

First off, I just want to thank you Mr. Curtin, Mr. Hewitt for being here today and Mr. Laborde as always.

Really important topic and glad we're able to learn more about it collectively here today.

But it's really important work that goes on every single day and it truly does make a difference in people's everyday lives.

but can you talk a little bit more about the Reynolds Consent Decree in particular, kind of how that came about, sort of like the facts and circumstances about how that came about, definitely understand the sort of rules and requirements that flow from it, certainly understand, you know, the, Yeah, that aspect of it and like the complex inter-departmental coordination that's required because it doesn't just apply solely to SDOT, but can you talk just a little bit more about how that Ronaldson Consent Decree came about, the facts?

I mean, I can't speak to great detail.

I started four years ago at Estat, and the consent decree started in 2017, but from my knowledge and that history is, quite frankly, we just didn't have an accessible right-of-way, and people were fed up, and enough people got together to form a class action lawsuit to make sure, to assure, because again, the ADA was passed in 1990. So to think from 1990 to 2015, for example, when they first started having these discussions, we're not the only city that this is happening in, unfortunately, around the country.

But right now, because of the consent decree, we have the minimum in what we need to do, and what we're trying to do with the program and in SDOT in general is go beyond the minimum.

and to make sure that we're having usable, accessible pedestrian facilities.

But again, from the origins of the consent decree, it was just that the residents, people within the city of Seattle just weren't happy with the progress that was being made for removing the barriers and providing curb ramps within the right of way.

And if I could quote Tom Hewitt really quick here, actually.

You know, it's never great whenever we're under the terms of consent decree.

We'd rather not be, right?

But the outcomes have been amazing, right?

I think that we've built more than 11,000 curb ramps in the last few years.

And as Tom mentioned, our vision is to go beyond that, right, to make the right-of-way as accessible as possible for all.

So really good story, despite the fact that we got entangled in, you know, some legal issues there.

Sure.

Really appreciate that.

Yeah, certainly the consent decree and the requirements set forth in the ADA and the companion Washington state statute, whatever it is, maybe some component of the Washington law against discrimination, potentially, who knows.

Those reflect the bare minimum, to your point, those reflect the bare minimum base legal requirements.

Every city department agency is obviously free to, and is not only free, but is strongly encouraged, backed with plenty of resources and empowered to exceed those thresholds.

And we're doing it not just because we're now subject to this consent decree, but we're doing it because it's the right thing to do.

and we are truly helping to make a difference in people's everyday lives and promoting a durable, reliable transportation network and set of infrastructure that works for all and is as inclusive as possible.

So that's key.

greatly exceeding those thresholds.

And by the accounts and data that I've seen, particularly as it relates to curb ramp installation, we do that regularly and consistently all the time.

So let's keep that up.

On slide 11, when we talk a little bit about some of the terms of the settlement, that second bullet, it's notes that there are 150 curb ramps required a year.

And again, generally greatly exceed that number.

Is that minimum threshold requirement, does that include curb ramp installations or curb ramps installed or delivered by third party developers or is that solely SDOT or city funded and delivered curb ramps?

And I ask because in just some additional context So when we went through our recent first phase of the comp plan process last year, as chair of our then transportation committee, I sponsored a number of amendments, because I am an unapologetic fan of constructing new sidewalks and infrastructure to make sure, you know, as we grow, people have accessible spaces to walk and like the drainage and waste piping and infrastructure is appropriate, you know, as well.

So added some amendments, including one that, that govern the construction of new sidewalks.

So we use the comp plan process as an opportunity to revisit the financial allocation as between the city responsibility and developer responsibility.

So one specific example is, you know, the proposal that was transmitted to us required urban centers, urban villages, I think to like developers to construct and make repairs to sidewalks and certain for those areas around the adjacent properties.

And we added neighborhood centers to that.

So basically guaranteeing that the developer would construct and repair more sidewalks.

So we know that developers and third parties you know, make some of these accessibility improvements as well.

So that's the context back to my original question.

Does that minimum $150 or 50 curb ramp figure per year?

Is that inclusive of third party contributions?

The answer to your question is is yes it can so it's a matter of where the curb ramp is requested So if it happens to occur at the same location as a utility project or as a private development project then that can Be counted but then we'll go on and we'll typically build more to meet with our 150 but we can get that credit so that a public utility or private development could build those curb ramps as part of their project because, again, it's in the order in which it's received.

So, you know, we have a list and as we're going through our list, if there is a, you know, private development project that's going and it's going to improve that intersection and that's going to happen earlier than when we're slated to build that curb ramp, that project, that private development project can build those curb ramps that are requested by the citizen.

Got it.

Thank you so much, colleagues.

Appreciate your, well, on the comp plan, thank you for your support of that amendment.

And that was definitely, there was, the comp plan is a very complex and strategic, nuanced work stream.

That wasn't one of the, you know, sort of glamorous aspects of that broader effort that we worked on together.

But it is one that is going to truly make a difference in people's lives.

today and tomorrow for decades to come, because they're gonna have places to walk.

And I don't know colleagues how many constituent queries and complaints you all get about busted piping and infrastructure, but my office gets a lot.

So this helps directly address that.

and so really appreciate our partners at SDOT for your presentation today and more importantly, doing the work every single day, engaging with folks in a collaborative way, all the disability advocates and accessibility advocates, including our own, during my pre-briefing, learn you all engage with our city's human rights commission, our city's disability commission amongst other stakeholders.

So really robust process, let's keep it up.

not just keep it up, pedal to the metal, let's do more.

So appreciate you all.

That is it.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Our next meeting is February 19th, 2026 at 9.30 a.m.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Hearing and seeing none, I wanna thank my colleagues again, really do appreciate your thoughtful engagement and discussion and questions.

It makes for a better sort of set of information sharing, not only for us as city professionals here, but importantly, the members of the public.

So thank you, thank you, thank you colleagues.

All right, hearing no further business to come before the committee, it is 1155 AM, we are adjourned, thank you.