Seattle City Council Briefing 4/19/2021

Thank you so much.

Okay, good morning, everyone.

Welcome back.

The April 19th, 2021 Council Briefing Meeting will now come to order.

The time is 9.30 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Herbold?

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant?

Present.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Seven present.

Thank you so much.

Approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of April 12th, 2021 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are now adopted.

I'm going to dispense with the President's report so we can dig right into the state legislative session update.

We are, as usual, joined by members of our Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

As a reminder, colleagues, this will be the last session update from OIR prior to Sinoday on Sunday, April 25th.

We do plan for the OIR team to come back on Monday.

Sorry, I think my date is wrong here.

I think it's, I think we're gonna have you all back in May for the full Sign2Die report.

But for now, I'm gonna hand it over to Lily for introductions and walking through the presentation.

Good morning, Council President, Council Members.

Lily Wilson-Kodega, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, and I'm going to pass it next to Robyn Koski.

Good morning, Robyn Koski, Deputy Director at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, handing off to Quinn Majewski.

Ben Majewski, State Relations Director OIR, handing off to Hannah.

Hannah Smith, Government Affairs Program Director OIR.

So as the Council President mentioned, we are before you today with the last state legislative briefing before we present our full sine die report on May 17th as we near the conclusion of the 2021 legislative session on April 25th.

You have all survived the first session in Washington state history to be held primarily online.

Much of this past week has centered around the Blake decision, and Representative Goodman and Representative Simmons have introduced corresponding legislation to increase funding for treatment and diversion, establish a task force to look at ways to examine issues with our current behavioral health systems, and remove barriers to treatment.

This is impacting as I understand it, and Robin can speak more at length to this bill, given the work she's done in her portfolio, but really tied into a lot of the negotiations around many things the city cares about.

This week, each chamber will be finalizing their operating capital and transportation budgets, and we can continue to see progress on the council's top priorities as it relates to progressive revenue, police reform, the eviction moratorium, tenant protections, right to council, and rapid acquisition funding.

Unfortunately, as Quinn will report in more depth, things are not faring as well in the transportation revenue space.

The majority of this week legislators will be voting on the floor as concurrence and budget negotiations continue.

And we expect to see budgets this week.

The latest we are hearing as of last night is Wednesday or Thursday.

Potentially the team can correct me if we've heard anything different since then.

And again, thanks to council for many meetings over the last weeks with legislative leaders to advocate for increased investment.

in rapid acquisition funding given the Office of Housing Success with the Clay Apartments.

And with additional state funding and this very unique window in the real estate market, we really have the potential to replicate this model and quickly house many Seattle residents experiencing homelessness.

So work continues in that space.

Many thanks for your assistance and for the letter that Council sent as well.

And then finally, we are especially grateful to Representative Macri, Senator Frocked, and Speaker Emeritus Chopp for their partnership and assistance, both on the capital funding and support for operating and maintenance dollars through further expansion of the document recording fee.

Again, thank you to Council for your engagement in this space as well.

And I will now turn it over to Quinn Majewski, our State Relations Director.

Thank you, Lily.

As Lily mentioned, in the budget and revenue space, the final details of the budget agreements for operating capital and transportation are still being ironed out.

I think there had been a potential notion that we might see those coming out today or tomorrow, but the latest we have heard is that they are likely to be out sometime in the middle of the week, potentially Wednesday or Thursday.

Still on track to be completed by the end of regular session on Sunday, but will likely just be a tighter margin than previously anticipated.

The only other update on the budget and revenue space, aside from some additional details on housing and Blake that I think Robin's going to get into in her section, is the House Finance Committee passed the Senate's capital gains tax proposal out of committee.

The bill was amended, aside from some technical clarifications, to change the distribution of the revenues.

Previously, those had gone first to the Education Legacy Trust Fund with the intention of funding child care and early learning investments.

A portion would have been dedicated to that, and then a portion to the newly created taxpayer relief account, and then the remainder dedicated to the general fund.

The House has amended it so that all of the proceeds of the tax would go towards the Education Legacy Trust Fund with the intention of funding investments in child care and early learning.

That is likely, that was pulled to the second readings calendar.

So floor action is likely to be coming up in either later today or the next day or two in tandem with action on the budget.

And then we'll go back over to the Senate for concurrence.

With that, I will pause for any questions on budget and revenue.

I'm just looking for any hands raised here.

I'm not seeing any hands raised.

So I think we can keep going.

Morning, just one quick update in the education space.

Senate Bill 5237, the Fair Starts for Kids Act needs concurrence in the Senate.

Amendments in the House added language recognizing the federal COVID relief funding for child care and changing some eligibility and copayment models for some of the programs in there will expect that concurrence later this week.

Other education bills that passed are working through concurrence as well, and Senate Bill 5401, computer science degrees, is headed to the governor's desk.

That's all I have on education.

If there's any questions.

Any questions, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can keep going.

Moving on to environment, two bills that we have been following are awaiting concurrence and our understanding is that they are likely to receive that this week as the legislature moves towards the end of session.

5022 concerning recycling waste and litter and 5141, most commonly known as the HEAL Act.

With a bit more, I suppose, drama around concurrence is House Bill 1091, which is the clean fuel standard.

Excuse me.

To get the bill out of the Senate, there were a variety of amendments adopted that watered that bill down and reduced some of the effectiveness when it comes to implementation dates, targets, carbon intensity reduction.

I think there is some back and forth now between the House and the Senate about whether those will be accepted or not.

And so I think that's a discussion that's happening between the prime sponsor in the House and some of the leaders in the Senate.

We'll see how that plays out.

And then finally, the Climate Commitment Act, which is the cap and invest legislation, Governor request and sponsored by Senator Carlisle, has continued to move forward.

It was passed by the Senate and last week had a hearing and committee vote in the House Environment Committee.

And then this week, action is being taken by the House Appropriations Committee.

There was very recently a new provision that was added that increases the scope of the preemption in potentially troubling ways and could potentially impact the city's ability to operate programs that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We're still digging into some of the details there, but I just want to highlight that and know that it is something that we are actively working on and engaged on.

With that, I think I will pause for any questions on environment.

Colleagues, any questions on environment?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can keep going.

In general government, just a few updates.

The legislative bodies have concurred on several bills that we have been monitoring and following and supporting, including 1443, the cannabis industry and equity, local redistricting deadlines, and alternative public works contracting.

A few bills are still remaining on the concurrence calendar, but there's been no indication for these particular bills that there's going to be any problems with the concurrence process.

So I'll pause there for any questions.

Colleagues, any questions?

I am not seeing any questions, so we can continue.

healthcare space, a lot of good news.

One bill to flag is the Comprehensive Health Districts Bill 1152. This bill has taken a lot of forms throughout the session, and it looks like the final version will impact the makeup of local boards of health, so there is larger representation from non-elected officials, including public health practitioners, consumers, and community stakeholders.

We're still unclear exactly what that all will look like for our Board of Health, but we'll continue to work with the county on that implementation.

House Bill 1477, the National 988 System Bill, received executive action in ways and means last week and is in rules.

It's NTIB, so has additional time, even though that time is quickly running out.

And Senate Bill 5068, the Postpartum Medicaid Bill, was delivered to the governor.

You'll remember that this bill passed last year, but was vetoed in the immediate response to the COVID budget impacts.

And so it's great to see this bill pass in its larger form.

And those are the updates in healthcare, if there's any questions.

Any questions, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can continue.

Good morning, everyone.

As far as housing and homelessness goes, Hannah, I'm probably going to be skipping around a little bit in terms of the bill numbers, just to let you know, because of some bills have been concurred on and others have not.

So as far as concurrence goes, House Bill 1220, that was the bill that would require planning for affordable housing and emergency shelter needs and establishes zoning requirements for permanent supportive housing, transitional housing and emergency shelter.

was concurred upon by the House and now will move to the Governor's desk.

Similarly, same thing for House Bill 1108 on foreclosure assistance and House Bill 1236, the Just Cause Eviction Bill.

There are a couple of bills that are very important that have not been completely resolved yet.

House Bill 1277, The document recording fees bill that would generate well over $100 million statewide for homelessness and rent assistance is still awaiting passage in the Senate, and we are working very hard to get that bill moving before the end of the session.

Last Monday, the bill was amended to include that 20% of the funds would be devoted to operations, maintenance, and services for permanent supportive housing.

So really good news for the city of Seattle since we do have so much permanent supportive housing and continue to add more all of the time.

So we will continue to keep you updated and work on that bill.

Senate Bill 5160, the bill that provides tenant protections following the end of the eviction moratorium, including right to counsel and a payment plan framework, Was amended as I mentioned last week to include and that the governor may not extend the eviction moratorium any further.

There is some real concern that there won't be enough time to set up the legal representation.

of that bill around the state.

So advocates are working very hard to make sure that there is some way to extend the eviction moratorium or do something to make sure that there's enough time to have those right to counsel set up to avoid sort of a bubble of evictions before right to counsel gets set up.

So we'll also keep you posted there.

That's what I have on housing and I'm happy to pause to see if there are any questions on those, these very important bills.

Thanks, Robin.

Any questions or comments on those bills, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any hands raised.

I think, oh, sorry, spoke too soon.

Council Member Salant, please.

Thank you.

And Robin, you just alluded to this point about the eviction moratorium.

And as you noted, in the final stages of approving the legislation, I'm really terrible that the Democrats in the State House agreed to an amendment to the Senate Bill 5160 that requires the governor's eviction moratorium to end at the end of June.

This last-minute amendment introduced and voted on in a rushed manner late in the evening of April 8, denying community activists the opportunity to weigh in, is a shameful betrayal of tenants everywhere.

Now tenants are fighting a defensive battle to strip this amendment out before the bill heads to the governor's desk.

I absolutely support the any last ditch effort that can be made here to remove this sunset clause.

But I just wanted to note for the record that is just absolutely shameful that the Democrats, including self described progressive Democrats have now gone on the record.

calling for an end to the eviction moratorium at a time of such unprecedented crisis.

We know that if this gets signed into law, as is, it will be absolutely catastrophic for tenants statewide.

And we need a full coverage on Right to Council.

And I would just note that the Right to Council that was passed But the city council is far stronger because of the movement we built here than the Senate bill.

But I think the paramount consideration here is what they've decided to do with the eviction moratorium.

So could you just say a few more words about what are the chances of rolling back this insidious amendment?

And I also just wanted to let you know in advance that if there are any efforts that my office can be I'm not sure what the chances are of something happening to change.

I am hopeful that, you know, I know that the Washington just so everyone realizes that this is a significant issue that there is quite a concern over.

So I am very hopeful that some resolution of this will occur in the last days of the legislative session.

And I will certainly let you know if there's anything that we can do at the city to try and make sure that that happens.

Thank you.

And if there are no other questions on housing, then I can move on to police reform, where there are also some exciting developments.

I don't see any other questions, Robyn, so I think we can move to police reform.

So similarly here, there are some significant statewide policies that have moved to the governor's desk.

House Bill 1267 on independent investigation, the House concurred with the Senate amendments.

That's the bill that would establish the statewide independent investigations of use of excessive force, which was a very important policy for the impacted families to see.

I think it was sort of the touchstone piece of legislation, so it's great to see that move forward.

House Bill 1089 that requires audits of deadly force incidents and also of law enforcement agencies to ensure compliance with training requirements was also concurred upon by the House and sent to the governor.

And the same thing with Senate Bill 5259 on data collection.

The Senate concurred with amendments and sent the bill to the governor's desk.

House Bill 1054 on tactics that bans chokeholds, no-knock warrants, limits use of tear gas, firing on a motor vehicle, and use of military equipment, as well as House Bill 1310 on use of force.

In both cases, the House refused to concur with the Senate amendments to those bills, and so they have been sent to conference.

I understand that conversations are ongoing, and there is also great hope that a resolution that's amenable to all parties involved will be reached and that those bills will in fact move forward by the end of the session on Sunday.

And then there are two other bills where concurrence has not happened that are fairly significant police reform bills.

That is Senate Bill 5051, Senator Peterson's Oversight and Accountability of Peace Officers Bill, otherwise known as decertification, is still waiting for House concurrence.

And then Senate Bill 5066, the Duty to Intervene Bill, is similarly waiting for concurrence.

So that is the update on police reform and happy to take any questions.

Any questions, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can continue.

Well, terrific.

And we will now move on to public safety, where there is a significant amount of intrigue that is occurring in the last days with regard to the Blake decision.

In the Senate, a striking amendment was advanced that significantly changed the content of Senator Dinger's bill that would have legalized a personal use amount of controlled substances.

And where it ended up was that it would create a situation where the personal use amount language was stripped and replaced with adding knowingly back into the drug possession laws.

And then what would happen with prosecution is that the first two cases that were legally sufficient for prosecution would be diverted for the treatment, would be diverted to treatment, excuse me.

And then a third and subsequent violation, it would be up to the prosecutor to decide when to refer that case.

It also includes quite a large study portion to look at things like the availability of treatment and diversion services across the state, you know, what barriers there are, what the workforce needs are of across the state in terms of people with substance abuse disorder, and What ended up happening was that it required votes of both Republicans and Democrats to get it out of the Senate.

Senator Dinger ended up actually not voting for her own bill, but all agreed that they wanted to move a policy forward to continue working on the issue.

On the other side of the chamber, the House introduced a bill as well, Representative Goodman and Representative Simmons, that would again establish a personal use amount, very similar to Senator Gingras' bill, and then make possession of a personal use amount a civil infraction.

Lily also highlighted this in her introductory remarks, but that also provides for a study to look at what the landscape of services are available in the community now and would provide a grant program that at this point seems to be largely unfunded.

So I would say with both of these things, we're just keeping an eye out.

The bills that create new misdemeanors would create additional, potentially additional caseload for municipal courts.

So we're just watching that to see how things develop.

This is very much still a work in progress.

It is an extremely complicated policy to try and figure out quickly at the end of a legislative session when you have so many differing opinions about what the a solution should be among the cast of legislators across both the Senate and the House.

So I will certainly update you on where this all ends up and keep you posted, but definitely an important policy that's being decided in these last days of the legislative session.

And I'm happy to take any questions there.

That concludes my report for today otherwise.

Thank you, Robin, for that.

Colleagues, any comments or questions on that report?

Councilmember Herbold, I see your hand is up, please.

And then if somebody from IT can reach out to Councilmember Morales, it looks like she is having some technology difficulties, that'd be great.

Councilmember Herbold, please.

Thank you.

I understand that the vote on the House version of the bill is this morning, is that correct?

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

I neglected to provide any other procedural update.

There is a hearing on the Senate version of the bill in the House Appropriations Committee today.

The House bill actually has not been scheduled for a public hearing yet.

I suspect that's just because of all of the ongoing negotiations.

I think it certainly is an important policy to put out there as part of the overall landscape of what's happening right now.

I have a note that the hearing is on a variation of the bill in the form of a striking amendment, which included a bad Republican amendment that apparently passed with only one of our own delegation voting in favor of it.

Can you describe what that amendment was?

That is essentially the amendment that I was describing that changes the, yeah.

And I can provide you, the Association of Washington City staff did a little bit of a summary of the amendment and I'm happy to send that to you.

And I can also send you sort of a line by line quick document comparison where you can see what the amendments did.

That would be really helpful.

I'm just wondering, as it relates to the House version of the bill, if that is moving forward, what we can do to make sure that the conversations around whatever vehicle passes is really centered on racial justice and behavioral health.

Would really like to know if there's something that the city of Seattle can do to just really send a strong message that those need to be the sort of the centering principles of the legislation in the face of the Blake decision.

And we can certainly communicate that to the legislators that we know are involved in the negotiations, Council Member Herbold.

I'm happy to contact them on your behalf and just let them know and, you know, make connections for you as well.

I know right now, of course, they're really trying to get this done.

But I think, you know, it's certainly not too late for us to say that we're interested in the outcome and that we really want to be part of the solution and we want to center racial equity in all of the discussions.

Thank you.

I think that unless there are any other questions on the intrigue around the Blake decision, I can pass it back to Quinn for the final transportation update.

Go ahead, Quinn.

I'm going to jump in quickly first with safety net.

I'm sorry, Hannah.

Geez, I'm forgetting.

Of course, it's the last week and I can't get it right.

Apologies, Hannah.

No problem.

So a couple quick updates here, mostly about concurrence.

They've concurred on House Bill 1297, the Working Families Tax Credit, 1140, the Juvenile Access to Attorneys, Paid Family Leave, and 1399, which reduces barriers for licenses for those with criminal convictions.

So all of those bills now move to the governor's desk.

Great news there, and those are my updates if there's any questions in this section.

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can keep going.

Great.

Now it is time for Quinn in transportation.

Thank you, Hana.

So rounding things out in transportation, I would just note that it appears quite unlikely at this point that the legislature will take action on a potential transportation revenue package this session.

With under a week left, both the House and Senate appear to still be quite far apart in their proposals.

The Senate last week advanced their proposal out of committee, but I think tellingly, despite many overtures made to the ranking member and sort of the Republican caucus, received no votes.

from Republicans.

It was passed on a party line vote.

That is notable because the bond bill in the transportation revenue package requires a 60% threshold, and so it is likely that they would need at least a few Republicans.

So the Senate has advanced their bill out of committee, but it has not gone to the floor yet, and the House has neither passed their bill out of committee nor gone to the floor.

Combined with all of the factors and interconnections with the Climate Commitment Act, which serves as a partial funding source, as well as the low carbon fuel standard and other environmental bills, it does appear unlikely that they will reach any sort of agreement there with just six days left.

So that is the transportation update.

Happy to take any questions in the space.

Colleagues, any questions?

I am not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can continue.

Lily, you want to close this out?

Yes, thank you, Council President.

I would just like to thank you all.

This session has been, has presented some pretty incredible challenges for our team.

And you have just been amazing partners with this office every time we've requested and I know you can all chuckle about the late night calls and weekend calls we have made to your offices, desperately asking for your engagement with specific legislators.

We, you've all bent over backwards to support the work of this department.

We're so grateful to you and just appreciative.

It made a challenging session that much better.

And I know we'll have many successes to report during our sunny die report on the 17th.

And then just lastly, given this is our last legislative report, I'd like to thank our excellent and exhausted state lobby team.

So Robin, our deputy director, Quinn, our state relations director, and Hannah Smith, our government affairs program director for their amazing work this session.

It's quite a sacrifice for them working every single day, all holidays, all weekends for so long.

And we are very lucky to have such smart, creative, and hardworking government affairs professionals here at the city.

I cannot adequately express my appreciation for all of them.

So thank you all so much.

Thank you, Lily, for that.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions before we say goodbye to members of the OIR team until May?

All right, I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

I also want to express my appreciation and gratitude to each of you for all of your good work, important work.

Look forward to, I'm sure, staying connected between now and May 17th.

But otherwise, we will see you back here on May 17th.

Good luck.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, colleagues, we're going to go ahead and move into other items of business on the agenda.

Next up is preview of today's City Council Actions, Council and Regional Committees.

This week's roll call rotation begins with Councilmember Herbold, followed by Councilmember Juarez, Luis, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Swant, and then I will conclude this agenda discussion.

So first up is Councilmember Herbold, and then we will hear from Councilmember Juarez.

Good morning.

Good morning.

And starting off items on the full council agenda from the public safety and human services committee.

We have two appointments from the city council being the appointing authority to the community commission.

And then there'll be, when Council Member Peterson discusses two of the bills coming from his committee, I'll talk a little bit about a couple of amendments coming up on two of his bills.

Also, updates from the Human Services Department and Public Health this week.

I wanted to just give a shout out to all the work that the Human Services Department and their employees are doing to continue to assist the Fire Department with vaccinations at senior housing sites.

This past week, the Human Services Department assisted with second dose clinics at seven Seattle Housing Authority buildings.

This coming week, Human Services Department staff will again be busy with 11 Seattle Housing Authority buildings scheduled for their second dose clinics.

The city announced last week that it would stop COVID testing at two sites.

One of those sites being in Rainier Beach and the other in West Seattle.

Saturday was the final day of testing there.

I have advocated with the mayor's office to keep COVID testing available, especially given the increasing number of COVID cases and hospitalizations.

over the last few weeks, and specifically for West Seattle residents given the difficulty of leaving the peninsula for health care.

The mayor's office had previously assured me that if the Southwest Thistle site were to stop testing, that they would place a curative testing kiosk in the near vicinity, similar to the existing kiosk at Don Armani.

And when I inquired about their testing replacement plans on Friday, I was told that they are in the process of adding a longer term, more sustainable, not run by the fire department testing capacity in multiple locations through a new provider.

They are promising an update in early May, so I look forward Through that update, I remain concerned that a fourth wave of COVID and hospitalizations is upon us, and this is the time to encourage more testing and make it easier to get tested.

This is especially true in the communities of Southeast and Southwest Seattle, where vaccination rates are lagging the rest of the city and where many members of our BIPOC communities live.

Meanwhile, you can get free testing locations.

You can find them at the public health website and it's kingcounty.gov forward slash COVID and click on where can I get a COVID test.

And as always, even as the weather improves, please keep up our precautions, wear a mask with a snug fit anytime you're in public or around unvaccinated folks, even if you are vaccinated, avoid crowds inside or out, and please keep your distance from others outside of your household.

Items that I have coming up this week, Thursday, I'll be attending the Regional Law and Safety and Justice Committee.

And one other, we also have the Housing Development Consortium's 13th annual celebration coming up as well.

That's on Wednesday.

I look forward to attending that.

And the other announcement I wanted to share is that I will be circulating a letter today at full council.

And this is really great news.

After months of negotiations, the city and the county are announcing today that $16 million in jail operations funding will be repurposed towards community-based health and housing programs.

And the three commitments contained in the letter refer to a divestment, as I said, of $16 million over 2021 and 2022 from jail operations and an investment of those dollars for community-based health and housing programs for communities that are disproportionately affected by the legal system and incarceration.

and a commitment to ongoing collaboration and transparency moving forward by the establishment of the Jail Advisory Group.

And again, the joint letter of intent documents these commitments.

It will inform the actions of the King County Executive, the Seattle Mayor, the King County Council, and Seattle's Council in 2021 and 2022 to mitigate the impacts of institutionalized racism, and to advance divestment from a system that impoverishes, then criminalizes the poverty of communities of color.

So, yes, we will have that for signature at full council today.

I want to thank everybody who has been involved in these negotiations, both on the city side and on the county side.

And a special shout out, as always, to the leadership of Council President Gonzalez in her work on this issue in prior years and this year as well.

Thank you.

That's it for me.

Thanks so much, Council Member Herbold.

Really appreciate it.

Colleagues, any comments or questions on that report?

All right, hearing none, next up is Council Member Juarez.

Good morning.

Good morning, everybody.

Let's see.

There are no items of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

The next meeting of our committee will be Tuesday, May 4th.

So I want to start with parks, what I do every Monday morning, and the Clean City Initiative.

From April 5th to April 11th, parks picked up 117 pounds of trash from 59 encampment locations.

Parks also removed 10,000 needles across these park locations.

Two parks received extra maintenance during this period, Freeway Park and Queen Anne's Parsons Gardens.

As far as childcare, Last week, Parkes served 302 children at 17 child care sites throughout the city.

And right now, Parkes is moving forward with their volunteer efforts.

So Parkes has scheduled four volunteer cleanup events this month.

This will be posted at our website.

I'll share it.

You guys will get this copy as well.

April 17th at Volunteer Park, April 20th at Cal Anderson Park, April 24th at North Acres, and April 24th at Dijon Park.

These events are limited to 10 volunteers per site, and they fill up almost immediately.

Parks is trying to schedule more events for this month, and I'll give you guys an update if they do that.

Reopening plans.

Parks has published its tentative reopening plan for summer programming.

You can read the plan on the Seattle Parks blog, pathways.seattle.gov.

Native communities.

This is very exciting for, I think, everybody, not just the Native American community.

our own uncle, Billy Frank Jr., there's going to be a statute in his honor.

A statute of environmental leader and treaty rights activist, Billy Frank Jr., who's an enrolled member of the Nisqually tribe, will replace the Marcus Whitman statute in the National Statute Hall located in D.C.

The hall is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans.

I don't know if any of you have ever been there, but there is no Native Americans there.

So that's always interesting.

Anyway, without me saying much more about Billy Frank, who's actually my Uncle Billy Frank Jr., Uncle Billy, as you know, was instrumental in the 1960s and 70s and the fishing wars with the Bolt Decision, along with his sister or grandma, Maisel Bridges, her husband, Al Bridges, their daughters, Suzette and Allison.

Allison, we lost about 10 years ago.

All of them come from the Franks Landing Indian community.

And now Uncle Billy's son, Willie, who is a a member of the Nisqually Tribal Council, continues Uncle's legacy of treaty and environmental advocacy.

So this is a big issue for us, the state of Washington and nationally, to honor and to have someone like Billy Frank Jr. in Washington, D.C.

because, as you know, when we have markers in history, we have been left out.

Most of us have been left out about who our heroes are.

These symbols are very important because we were part of making of this country and defending this country.

And those of you who do your indigenous land acknowledgement, that's what that should be about.

So I'm really proud to read and hear about this.

I actually was involved in kind of behind the scenes, but to see it happen on the national level is a day that I never thought would happen.

So it's a big deal for us.

Anyway, Uncle Billy was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor in 2015. Moving on, a big thank you to State Representative and our friend, Deb Lakenoff, for spearheading the bill, HB 1372, to ensure the legacy of the life's work is remembered, that his work is remembered.

And also, Representative Lakenoff sponsored a bill to remove Native Americans from our Washington State school mascots.

This bill prohibits the inappropriate use of Native American names, symbols, or images as public school mascots, logos, or team names.

HB 1356 passed both the chambers and it's on its way to the governor's desk.

This issue has been going on since I was in high school and I'm 61. It's kind of sad.

We got to pass a law to say you can't name a school after tribal folk, but I guess that's where we're at these days.

Anyway, it's happening.

So that's a good thing.

Sound transit.

I have a board meeting this week and we're continuing our discussions on realignment.

So when we make some decisions in coming up in July, And last week, I had an opportunity to meet with the Washington State Retail Association regarding economic recovery and jobs.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez for that report.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, I don't see any comments on that.

So next up is Councilmember Lewis and then after Councilmember Lewis is Councilmember Morales.

Good morning.

Thank you, Council President.

There are no items from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments on the Introduction Referral Calendar or on this afternoon's Council Agenda.

I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that last week, along with Council President Gonzalez, I did have the pleasure to meet with Mark Dons at the governing board meeting of the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

I'm just checking the calendar here.

I believe Mark's official first day will be tomorrow, April 20th.

So they were very gracious to come and talk to the governing board.

in anticipation of taking on this new and highly anticipated role.

The presumptive executive CEO Dawns gave us an update on their staffing plan, the needs of the authority in the near term to begin the strategic planning process necessary to stitch together the diverse coalition that is King County to confront the homelessness crisis on a regional level.

And we set a special meeting for May of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Governing Board to confirm and ratify that staffing plan once it is baked in.

And once Mark has the opportunity to settle in formally to the job starting this week, I wish them the best of luck.

I encourage anyone curious about the work of the authority to take an opportunity to try to connect and meet with CEO Dons.

I'm sure they will be very accessible and I look forward to that collaboration.

Board of Health, I attended the Board of Health last week along with my colleagues, Council Member Muscata and Council Member Morales.

Just a few of the highlights that I took away from that meeting, certainly not everything we discussed, But a couple of the things that I think stood out, we can all take great pride as King County residents that 50% of King County residents have received at least one vaccine dose in the COVID-19 fight.

That is a statistic that is already out of date from looking at the county executive's Twitter this morning.

It appears we're up to 52% of folks who have had at least one dose.

which is great progress.

People do still need to observe social distancing and mask wearing.

There are still particularly potent variants that are in the community.

We are still in the middle of this fight against COVID-19, so everyone should maintain their vigilance that we've maintained throughout the pandemic.

But it is encouraging to see the progress that is being made on vaccinations, and that was a good update to hear.

We also received an update from Director Patty Hayes indicating that poor access to running water and encampments for our neighbors experiencing homelessness in Seattle remains a matter of public health concern, particularly the vulnerability it poses to people contracting and spreading hepatitis A.

Hepatitis A, which can be effectively and easily combated by widespread access to running water and soap.

You know, this was a particular takeaway, I know, for Councilmember Morales and I, given this Council's leadership, following Councilmember Morales's leadership in funding innovative street sinks to be deployed throughout the city.

Recent coverage in Publicola has indicated that that effort remains somewhat stalled and something that we need to be paying attention to.

I just want to announce today that I am going to be requesting an update from the relevant executive departments on the street sink situation, given the briefing we received at Public Health to be presented at the Select Committee on Homelessness on May 8th on potential hurdles or what needs to be done to stand up that program and stand up those critical investments.

It was confirmed by the public health leadership that while hand sanitizer is better than nothing, it is still not nearly as desirable as running water and soap to combat hand borne and fecal matter borne illnesses like hepatitis A.

So I look forward to that update on May 8th, and I do want to take the chance again to commend Councilor Morales for her leadership on this area and for having the foresight to fund that investment, responding to this really challenging public health situation through the spread of hepatitis A, that we have to remind ourselves COVID-19 is not the only challenge we're facing in the community.

Finally, I will be attending the Puget Sound Regional Council's Executive Committee on Thursday the 22nd this week.

Otherwise, I have no additional updates.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised, so we will continue down the line.

Next up is Council Member Morales, followed by Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

There are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on today's agenda.

Our next committee meeting is tomorrow.

We've got two pieces of legislation to discuss and hopefully vote on, and several appointments, again, from ARTS and from EDI.

And then we'll have a discussion about next steps for the implementation of participatory budgeting.

So, moving on to department and regional updates, a couple of quick department updates.

I did meet with interim director Banks from the Office of Economic Development last week to discuss how the department will be shifting their focus to an equitable recovery.

I need to understand better what this really means for staffing and for delivery of services that are already planned or had already been planned for 2021. So we did discuss an organizational shift, but I've asked for a follow-up meeting to discuss in more detail what that really means.

When will this happen?

How long will it take?

How many FTEs will be shifted and for what purpose?

There's still a lot of questions about what this change in structure actually looks like.

So I look forward to following up and filling in the rest of council as I learn more.

Last week, I participated in the monthly Board of Health meeting, as Councilmember Lewis noted, and thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

It was really important for us to hear directly from Director Hayes and from our public health officer the importance of hand washing and soap, particularly because, as you mentioned, there's an outbreak again of Hep A. We've returned to the pre-pandemic levels again for HEPE, and in the same population, we are also experiencing, they are also experiencing, Shigella, I think you said, reported 142 cases.

Another 47 cases of cryptosporidium since October, which as you may recall, these are illnesses that are transmitted often through fecal matter.

So hand washing is really important to prevent these other illnesses from breaking out.

And also mentioned that we've had an 84% that 84% of the folks who are experiencing this are in fact homeless.

So we know how important it is to make sure we're protecting people.

With regard to COVID, the other thing we learned is that we are back above the COVID outbreaks from last summer.

So we've had fewer hospitalizations in adults due to COVID-19, but the number of hospitalizations in younger adults is actually increasing.

And if I'm recalling correctly, we're having one King County resident hospitalized every 45 minutes.

So it's really challenging right now for the general public.

We're getting sort of mixed messages that we're moving into phase three, we're opening up again, and at the same time, outbreaks are increasing.

So it's really important to continue wearing masks, to continue not hanging out with people who don't live in your household, because we're really closing King County to going back to phase two.

So we need to all remember to practice good protocol.

The last regional committee, well, other outside committee, I participated in the Seattle Investment Fund meeting last week on Friday, and I was excited to approve an investment of $89,000 in new market tax credits to Cafe Evol.

First branch is down here in Rainier Valley, but they are opening another branch in the Liberty Bank building in the Central District.

And so really excited to offer this tenant improvement grant for them.

I wanna say congratulations to Solomon Duby and his crew.

And also thanks to the folks at OED, including Ken Takahashi for their underwriting analysis, really confirms the development and operational feasibility of this project and forward to having another black owned business back in the Liberty Bank building.

Some quick district updates.

Last week my son and I joined the folks at Food Lifeline and the Rainier Valley Food Bank to distribute food boxes to families in the region.

I also want to thank the Parks Department and the folks at the Rainier Beach Community Center for hosting what was a drive-through event.

There was also a walk-up facility.

We were able to distribute food boxes to almost 1400 households, which is shocking.

That was just in about two hours time.

There's a lot of need and we know a lot of food insecurity in the region still.

I personally spoke to about a dozen families who requested diapers.

And unfortunately, we did not have any to distribute.

Sometimes there is a load that's available.

So if anybody listening has a lead on some possible diaper donations for the food bank, please let my office know and we will be happy to help make that connection for you.

Last Wednesday we were joined by Tram Tran-Larsen from the Housing Justice Project, Dulce Gutierrez-Vazquez from El Centro de la Raza, and a Seattle tenant, Ariana Laureano, to announce our first piece of legislation in the Tenant Bill of Rights that we're working on.

That legislation, which would close the end of lease termination loophole that exists currently, is one of several pieces of tenants' rights and eviction defense legislation that my office will be bringing throughout the year.

We've talked about this several times already in briefing.

In the next few weeks, we'll unveil the next piece of legislation that we've been developing with community partners, which is an eviction defense for tenants who are facing hardship during the pandemic.

And then later this year, we'll look more closely at an overhaul of just cause and at providing eviction defenses that aim to steer landlords and tenants to other forms of resolution.

All of these together will establish the Tenant Bill of Rights.

I just want to say that the Stay Housed, Stay Healthy campaign, which represents 42 organizations and thousands of tenants across the city, asked my office to work on all of these policies back in December.

We have been working since then with these organizations and advocates to draft each of these bills since January.

In February and March my office met with central staff and with law and with Asha from central staff who's been drafting the first two pieces of legislation.

We've done all of this alongside community and through council central staff.

This work has really been done with community in a very a thorough way of getting regular feedback from folks.

So this hasn't been done in a vacuum, and I'm really looking forward to the support of my colleagues as these pieces of legislation come together and come before all of you.

And then just a couple more things.

Several weeks ago, I toured around the I-90 area with Rooted in Rights, with Lighthouse for the Blind, and other pedestrian and bike infrastructure advocates.

We walked around We walked around the area surrounding the coming Judgins Park light rail station, which is right on the I-90 ramp or overpass over Rainier.

And we saw just how scary it is to try to navigate around those ramps if you're a pedestrian.

So my office has been working with WSDOT and SDOT.

We've been meeting with State Senator Saldana and others to try to work on this transportation package, and I'm really frustrated.

I can't imagine how Quinn is feeling that this isn't moving the way we had hoped.

But I am hopeful that we will begin to see some serious commitments to pedestrian infrastructure so that we can address this I-90 issue and have some mitigation for the ramps that are really impeding the safety of folks who are disabled, folks who are trying to move through that intersection in a safe way.

I do want to thank Lakeisha Farmer on my staff for convening those discussions with the different transportation organizations and keeping this issue front and center.

Then finally, I'm excited to be offering two workshops on Thursday at the annual Wablock Block Party.

This is an organization that works deeply with young people, particularly at Rainier Beach High School.

I've been participating in some capacity in this event for the last several years, and it's always fun to spend some time with our young people.

My staff member Darzel and I will be leading a workshop called Visioning for the Future.

to open up a dialogue between Rainier Beach students about the changes that they want to see in their neighborhood and to, I don't have to remind them that they deserve to be at the decision-making table, they already know that, but this is a chance for us to really engage with them and share some of the work that we're doing.

So looking forward to that and that is all I have this morning.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales, are there any comments or questions on that report?

All right, I'm not seeing any comments or questions, so we'll go ahead and continue down the line here.

Next up is Council Member Mosqueda, and then after Council Member Mosqueda will be Council Member Peterson.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

I apologize for not being on camera this morning.

We are all in our household dealing with a little bit of sickness, so I have a sick kiddo here with me this morning.

I apologize for not being there, but I am watching you all and will provide my report via audio.

I do not have any items on today's full council meeting.

However, I would very much like to bring forward the Seattle Housing Authority Director Andrew Lofton proclamation that I sent around last Friday.

Colleagues, this would be an opportunity for us to honor Director Lofton for his work as Executive Director from the Seattle Housing Authority for the past nine years.

He will be retiring in early May, and we hope that with your signature today, we can send him off.

with a proclamation that acknowledges his service in the city of Seattle under multiple mayors and working with various councils.

This is really a hard job and I know that a lot has been done to improve both community preference and affirmative marketing under his leadership and making sure that those who are facing risk of displacement have an opportunity to stay in the city.

as we enhance and build additional buildings and more housing.

This will be a chance as well for us to honor him before our finance and housing committee meeting, which is tomorrow and will be his last opportunity to present in our committee.

So the proclamation was circulated last Friday at 12.30 p.m.

and I hope you will sign on.

I will pause here for the appropriate roll call from the council president and appreciate your consideration in advance.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, for those introductory remarks.

Colleagues, as Council Member Mosqueda just mentioned, there will be a proclamation presented this afternoon at 2 o'clock p.m.

Before I ask the clerk to call the roll on the signatures to the proclamation, I want to offer folks an opportunity to ask any questions they might have.

Council Member Sawant, please.

Thank you.

I have some comments about the proclamation.

I will not be signing this proclamation.

As this proclamation itself boasts, Andrew Loftin led the nationwide federal program called Moving to Work.

Moving to Work has been a federal neoliberal assault on the little remaining public and affordable housing.

Moving to Work's plan was to carry out massive increases in public housing rent with the idea that the tenants would be more motivated to get better paying jobs.

This is garden variety conservative ideology, which claims that people are poor because they're too lazy to seek better paying jobs, which serves as an excuse for austerity.

There is also a racial dimension, given that a large proportion of public housing residents are low income families of color, many from the immigrant community, and many comprising single mom households.

In an Orwellian move, the Seattle incarnation of moving to work was called stepping forward.

If stepping forward had been allowed to succeed, it would have dismantled the affordability threshold, which is that the rent be no greater than 30% of the tenant's income.

Under stepping forward, the rents would be increased by an eye-popping 400% over six years.

As single mother Rebecca Snowlander, a tenant at SHA Housing in North Seattle at the time, told KUOW, quote, When I got that letter from SHA, I could barely get out of bed for about a week because it almost felt like a death sentence in a way.

It felt like we don't have a chance." Rebecca and her fellow tenants understood what is borne out by cruel statistics, that this dramatic rent increase would have meant mass evictions and that nearly nine out of 10 evictions result in homelessness. From the moment it was announced, there was virtually unanimous and powerful opposition by SHA tenants to stepping forward. At the second SHA public meeting organized by Andrew Loftin and his staff at the Yesler Community Center, then Council Member Nicola Cotta and I, and Socialist Alternative joined the Tenants' Rally outside. The Tenants' Union, the League of Women Voters, and other community organizations also stood with what evolved into a serious community struggle led mainly by courageous East African single mom SHA tenants, East African leaders like Mama Fadumo, Abdi Mohammed, and Uba Warsame, and Socialist Alternative. Our movement organized hundreds of SHA residents to protest at public meeting after public meeting ending with an incredible walkout of hundreds from the last public meeting at the High Point Community Center in West Seattle. Following the walkout, we held a people's assembly in the basketball court. We built unstoppable momentum with hundreds of East African and other community members of color who had never before participated in a political movement. Our movement completely upended the plans of SHA, the Seattle Democratic Establishment, and the Obama administration, which was ultimately responsible for the gutting of public housing funding that was happening at the time. They had organized the public meetings expecting that tenants would be either gullible enough or not confident enough to oppose stepping forward. Under pressure from our movement, then Mayor Ed Murray and Council Member Bruce Harrell were forced to publicly oppose stepping forward. And in a historic victory, SHA and Andrew Lofton were forced to withdraw stepping forward and allow public housing tenants to stay secure in their homes. To my knowledge, Seattle was the only city in which moving to work initiative was defeated. This was nearly seven years ago, but I still remember vividly the thunder of a gymnasium full of immigrant tenants chanting, stepping backward in empowered call and response. SHA and Lofton said they would require tenants to undergo a quote-unquote self-sufficiency assessment by the King County Workforce Development Council, which runs the employment assistance program, WorkSource. As one of the tenants reported, WorkSource did not help him learn English or obtain employment. He challenged Lofton publicly saying, quote, you say we can all get jobs and afford higher rents. Why don't you learn Somali or Chinese in the next year and then we'll believe you, end quote. That got a huge round of whooping applause from the crowd who chanted, where are the jobs? Show me the jobs. This brutal attack on public housing was attempted in 2014, even though a 2013 audit of moving to work by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's own Office of Inspector General found that, quote, HUD was unable to demonstrate program results. Also, HUD had limited ability to assess agencies' compliance with statutory program goals and lacked assurance that agencies met key statutory requirements, end quote. Of course, in the long line of powerful individuals who have carried out such disgusting efforts to gut public programs, Andrew Loftin is not at the top of the list. The capitalist class, the billionaires and millionaires, and their political representatives in the form of the Democratic and Republican parties bear the primary responsibility. It is their system that is the reason for an acute affordable housing crisis in so many cities and for the assault on the public resources that were hard won through past struggles led by powerful labor and social movements. Stepping forward, for example, was justified on the basis of impending $12 million cuts to public housing. Democrat President Barack Obama and both Democrats and Republicans in Washington State and the U.S. Congress bear blame for this. However, Andrew Lofton was not an innocent lower rung employee, he could have used his prominent position to help build a fight to tax the rich and increase funding for affordable housing and reject the cuts. In fact, though, he was the bureaucrat who led the moving to work program nationally and champion stepping forward in Seattle. This is the same logic that led him and the city's democratic establishment to sell off half of Yesler Terrace to Balkan in 2012 to raise the funds to renovate the other half. Again, he and the local democratic politicians should have used their positions to tax the rich citywide and to demand adequate housing for funding for housing from the Obama administration and from the state legislature, rather than cheerleading the process of abandoning housing authority land to gentrifying corporate developers. And Loftin seems to be unrepentant about his role as is evident from the interview he recently gave to Puget Sound Business Journal. It is extremely unfortunate that progressive Democrats have brought this proclamation forward. Instead of honoring Andrew Loftin, this proclamation should be honoring the East African immigrant heroes of that movement that defeated stepping forward, like Mama Fodumo, Abdi Muhammad, Uba Warsame, and so many others. And I'm proud to stand in solidarity with them. Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Council President.

Council Member Esqueda, please.

Thank you so much.

I think it's extremely unfortunate that these comments and concerns weren't raised on Friday.

I sent the proclamation to every office on Friday last week.

I obviously wasn't here seven years ago.

This tenure that I've had with Director Loftin over the last four years has allowed for an opportunity for me to see how potentially these policies that you just talked about that were championed by community have been stuck to.

I am not here to defend any policy that was advanced by a national or local administration.

And obviously I think that much of what you just stated regarding the policy are things I object to as well.

Absolutely have stood against any sort of requirement to work.

I've stood against policies that you describe in stepping forward.

It's unfortunate that I wasn't aware of this history.

And for that, I will continue to do some research.

However, I think that it's important to recognize the multiple ways that the 40-year historic low, both in terms of federal funding, has contributed to lack of housing in this area.

Obviously, I don't believe this is on one individual, and I do hope to celebrate, I think, what has been a tenure that I have seen, at least in our committee on housing, that has focused on affirmative marketing policies to make sure that 100% of those who wanted to come back to Yesler Terrace, for example, were admitted I would like to make a few comments.

One, I think that the policy concerns and objections that you raise are things that I agree with.

I do hope that people will continue to sign on to this proclamation to honor the public service from a public servant.

That does not necessarily equal in interest of mine to make sure that at the end of the tenure that the work to the city and making sure that the policies that community organizations, as you noted, had called for were ultimately implemented.

This is part of that effort to recognize that work, and I still hope folks will sign on.

Council Member Peterson, I see that your hand is raised as well.

Please.

Thank you.

Good morning, colleagues.

And thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for bringing this proclamation forward.

And thank you, Council Member Sawant, for raising that, the history of the program.

I'm still comfortable with this proclamation because the way it talks about that moving to work, it's just noting what he's doing, one of the things that he's working on now, but I don't think the proclamation needs to go into the, the details of the first iteration of that, which did raise questions and people appropriately raised a bunch of questions when it first came out years ago.

And so I'll be supporting this proclamation.

I think the theme here is that Andrew Lofton has been a public servant that has served the city and the region for decades and he's retiring.

And so it's celebrating the multiple challenging issues that he had worked on in different positions.

So I'll be supporting the proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson for those comments.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I just wanted to clarify that the statements that Andrew Loftin made where he is clearly unrepentant about what he was trying to champion, which is a neoliberal program, were made only last, I believe this is a quote from February.

So it is very recent.

And also, you know, if council members are uncomfortable about supporting somebody who championed, you know, as I said, it's not, he was not an innocent bystander.

He championed the program.

He was the leader of the moving to work initiative.

You can look all this up.

And so if, you know, I would support holding the proclamation.

If you all say that you weren't aware of this, then what's stopping you from holding the proclamation, I think that would be the right thing to do.

And the right thing to do would be to honor the East African community member tenants who fought against this program.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions on this proclamation?

Okay, I am not seeing any other hands raised.

So we're gonna go ahead and move forward based on Council Member Mosqueda's comments that she'd like to continue to move forward with the proclamation based on its content.

So I'm gonna ask that the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signature affixed to the proclamation honoring Andrew Loftin, Executive Director of the Seattle Housing Authority.

Council Member Harbold.

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

No.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

That's seven council members.

Thank you so much.

Okay, Council Member Muscade, I'm gonna hand it back over to you, because I think you might have had some additional portions of your report that you would like to make.

I sure do.

Thank you very much, colleagues, and thank you, Council President.

On the introduction and referral calendar, there are three items for your consideration, and I wanna make sure that you know what those are.

Council Bill 1200, to 0041 is the extension of the coronavirus relief funds.

This appropriation bill will allow for us to allocate $18 million that we were initially holding back for possible need to use with federal reimbursement.

We now know that we no longer need to do that.

So there is real urgency to get these funds out the doors for programs that may be expiring.

As we work to finalize the American Recovery Plan Act bill, we wanted to make sure to get these dollars out the door.

So I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail when I get to my committee report.

Council Bill 120039 and Council Bill 120040 are the carry forward and budget acceptance ordinances that are planned for a meeting on May 5th.

That's our special meeting.

In terms of Finance and Housing Committee report, just a reminder that all council members are welcome to attend the Finance and Housing Committee to listen and provide feedback and engage in the discussion on the American Rescue Plan Act.

Please do let Frida Cuevas in my office know if you'd like to attend and haven't received the login information.

We'll make sure to get that information to you and you can get updates about the committee that way.

Our next meeting is tomorrow, April 20th at 9.30 a.m.

We will start as we usually do with 20 minutes of public comment and then move into items of business on the agenda at 10 a.m.

At 10 a.m.

we will have an American Rescue Plan Act community panel that will include folks from housing and homeless services, health and small business, child care and worker rights advocates, and immigrant and refugee community advocates.

We're not expected to go longer than about 45 minutes on this, and the community partners will basically provide an update from their purview on issues of most importance during this last year that we could potentially consider as we plan the American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

The next item at 10.45 a.m.

will be the Coronavirus Relief Fund Extension Bill that I just mentioned.

Allie will be presenting on this bill.

Again, the bill number is Council Bill 120041. This will be an opportunity for us to have a discussion about programs that are expected to potentially go away in the near future that were funded in our 2020 budget and original CRF fund allocation.

We do have a memo from Ali Panucci that was sent around to all folks on the floor, on the legislative department floor, that was sent about 9.30 a.m.

on Friday.

As a reminder, to reiterate some of the points in that memo, this CRF extension is about $18 million of the 2020 coronavirus relief funds that were not expended in 2020. This is scheduled for discussion and possible vote on tomorrow's meeting.

And if not voted out, then we'll also have the chance to have the discussion on May 5th during our special meeting.

The CRF resources must be expended by the end of 2021. So the proposed appropriations for these items include items that have a high degree of certainty that they will be able to expended relatively quickly, early this year to make a meaningful impact in community.

Some examples of the expected allocation include increasing service levels provided in the first half of the year for food service providers and food banks, increasing appropriations for the Department of Education and Early Learning to provide grants to child care providers who applied for financial support through Jump Start's COVID relief funds for child care providers, but due to the limited number of resources, didn't receive any financial assistance.

It also includes funding for other programs that are potentially going to go away in April, including cleaning the city's initiative, increasing funding for vaccine outreach and other efforts that have been identified as dollars that can be available to spend relatively quickly.

What you'll see from the central staff's presentation during tomorrow's meeting is a reminder that this $18 million is being paired with $119 million to come.

So please note that this is an initial bill for us to identify any short-term you know, problems, consequences that we might see for programs that are potentially going to expire.

And remember that this will be married with the larger investment of almost $120 million to come very soon.

In the memo from Ali, you'll also see action over the next six to eight weeks for us to be able to continue the discussion of the first tranche of the direct aid that we're receiving from the American Rescue Plan Act coronavirus local relief recovery bill so as a reminder this is and sounds like a new acronym but this is the ARPA funds for local use so the coronavirus local fiscal recovery is CLRF you'll see that mentioned in the memo and this again is the 119 million that allows for targeted aid to go to our city and based on previous discussions and priorities listed in Resolution 31999, which you all participated in providing feedback and voted on, we will base expenditures on that resolution.

And we'll also include a significant increase in several areas, including homelessness and housing services, economic recovery and reopening efforts, and investment in the community, such as financial assistance, gender-based violence services and responses, and many other services.

Ali sent an update as well in that memo to outline the upcoming meetings so that you all have the most recent calendar in front of us.

Just as a reminder, tomorrow again we'll have the initial part of our meeting on April 20th focused on the community resource panel and discussion and possible vote on the COVID response efforts for extending our CRF funds into 2021. We will have a public hearing on Tuesday, May 4th, 530 p.m., and we will be expecting to hear over the course of a few hours from community members who are calling in to provide updates on what they'd like us to consider.

That will inform our next two meetings in May.

Again, those are on May 5th and May 18th.

The May 5th meeting starts at 2 p.m., and the May 18th meeting is at 9.30 a.m.

And we will wrap up our discussion on amendments and have possible vote on June 2nd and June 15th.

So we are expected to wrap up this discussion on the COVID ARPA funds for local relief by June 15th in the Housing and Finance Committee meeting.

Also want to note, you will be receiving an email here from Director Ben Noble very soon he will be providing us with an update on the revenue forecast during tomorrow's meeting.

You will probably see that in the next hour or two.

I just got a note from him that he is planning to send that out this morning and we have not seen the details but I think that it is possible that we will continue to see a slight uptick in revenue given what the numbers were reported at the state earlier this year.

will be available at the end of the meeting.

Central staff will also be able to walk through the presentation and identify possible questions and give us additional context for our discussion tomorrow.

And then the last two items on our agenda during the finance and housing committee meeting as we wrap up towards the end of that meeting will be the Northgate commons presentation and a continuation of An update on what we've been up to.

I just want to take a quick second to say thanks and congratulations to Ray Morales.

He is a friend of mine from Mecha Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan from University of Washington who is now the Chief Seattle International High School Principal.

So congratulations to a Metro alum for all of the work that they've done.

And Ray Morales is a Seattle native who values education, social justice and service.

His entire family, he and his wife, have been a tremendous asset to this community, fighting for the rights and and dignity of most vulnerable community members in our area.

Ray earned his BA at University of Washington, his master's in social work at Columbia University, and his principal certification at the Seattle University program here locally.

Very excited for his new tenure starting in July.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Making Urbanism Anti-Racist series, an ongoing conversation with the national advocates looking at housing and transit and how to advance racial equity.

through those discussions.

And this week we'll continue to meet with various community stakeholders to hear their ideas for ARPA funds.

Very briefly, updates from some of the organizations, I'm sorry, some of the departments within our committee.

An update from Office of Labor Standards, the TNC driver minimum compensation announcement will go out from OLS via email to approximately three, I'm sorry, approximately 30,000 TNC drivers about their rights under the TNC Minimum Compensation Ordinance.

This message is going to be available in multiple languages and making sure that we provide information to drivers about wage calculations, notice of rights, new recorded webinars available at OLS, and information about COVID vaccine.

From FAS, they continue to provide support for the daily operations at the community vaccine site at Lumen Field.

Really excited to see all the social media posts from various people who finally got their vaccines at the Vax Day event at Lumen Field.

They continue to provide information, not just information and services related to COVID, but they also are doing a number of other things, including making sure that there's a proposed director's rule that was issued just this month on reducing the estimated wheelchair accessible services surcharge by 80% for the 2022 licensing year, reflecting a decline in the number of trips from 2019 and 2020. They're also doing outreach on marijuana racial equity toolkit outreach that began this month as well.

And they're working specifically with Sudanese American and East African community members to collect feedback regarding licensing opportunities for individuals who formerly owned medical marijuana dispensaries.

And they continue to work with the National Skills Coalition and National Workforce Development Advisory Coalition, working on labor equity.

and working to make sure that they're meeting with a number of Washington congressional members in the upcoming month to discuss the city's priority hire program.

The coalition is developing recommendations for the Biden administration to identify a priority hire as best practices.

This and many other efforts, as you have heard me report on before.

With that, I will conclude.

Thank you very much, Council President, and thank you all for your work today.

Thank you so much.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and hear now from Council Member Peterson.

Good morning.

Good morning, colleagues.

The Transportation and Utilities Committee has five items on this afternoon's full City Council agenda.

As you may recall, the council adopted the surveillance impact reports on the existing technologies already being used by Seattle City Light and the Seattle Fire Department.

On April 7th, our committee also approved five surveillance impact reports on existing SPD technologies, and those are before the full council today for final adoption.

These five existing technologies are the 911 recording info, the license plate readers for patrol, license plate readers for parking enforcement, computer-aided dispatch technology, and online crime reporting technology.

The committee amended each ordinance and then approved them unanimously on April 7. Based on some feedback after committee, Councilmember Herbold is further refining two of our original amendments today by further reducing the amount of time SPD can retain records.

I support Councilmember Herbold's amendments.

and look forward to voting for them today.

Our central staff analyst, Lisa Kay, will be available before full council today in case there are any last minute questions.

We did have this on the, you know, we skipped a week before bringing these bills to full council to give people more time to review them.

In addition to the items from our committee, today's agenda has two straightforward refinements to key COVID relief measures from both City Light and Seattle Public Utilities.

Council Bills 120035 and 120036 were posted on our introduction and referral calendar over a week ago, and they simply expand the utility emergency assistance programs for struggling rate payers for 2021. Our central staff analyst, Brian Goodnight, circulated a brief memo about both bills on Friday.

He's available to answer any questions today between this council briefing and our full council meeting.

In short, both bills are a helpful expansion of the emergency assistance programs during these difficult economic times.

These ordinances are required for these simple modifications for 2021. Our Transportation Utilities Committee meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9.30 in the morning.

So our next committee meeting will be this Wednesday, April 21. We published our agenda this past Friday, and I'll go ahead and highlight some items coming to our committee this week.

At our last meeting on April 7, we received an important briefing from Seattle Public Utilities on the proposed strategic business plan, which will impact SPU utility rates.

It's important to note that SPU's strategic plan has been endorsed by the customer review panel, and we will hear from the head of the customer review panel this Wednesday at committee.

We'll also discuss the analysis of the plan and the proposed rate path from our city council central staff.

Fortunately, the average SPU rates are expected to be lower than what was promised back in 2017. Keeping rates low is important because rates are technically regressive with lower income households paying a larger percentage of their household income for utility bills.

SPU is eager to have us vote the plan out of committee on the third committee meeting on this subject, which will be on Wednesday, May 5. Internet for All.

In our committee, we will receive a follow-up report from our Information Technology Department on their implementation of our Internet for All action plan.

This is something that we adopted in September of last year.

I'd like to thank Seattle IT for their work thus far, and also thank this council, including co-sponsors Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Juarez, for unanimously adopting the Internet for All resolution last summer.

As we decide how best to invest funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, I hope we can keep front and center the digital divide and the urgent need for digital equity.

Specifically, we might be able to use ARPA dollars to accelerate implementation of the Internet for All Action Plan by, for example, awarding more dollars right away to expand the technology matching funds that were awarded earlier this year.

There were several applications that were not able to be funded due to limitation of funds.

bridges.

Our committee will also receive an update on SDOT's implementation of the audit concerning Seattle's bridge maintenance backlog.

At the same time, we will receive an update on a separate but related challenge of keeping our bridges safe from earthquakes, the seismic retrofitting that is needed for many of our old bridges.

This Wednesday, our committee will also hear SDOT's recommendations on how to invest $7 million from the $20 increase in vehicle license fees that the council adopted.

As you may recall, we did not reach consensus on how to spend those dollars last November.

So a majority of the council asked SDOT to convene some stakeholders for transportation, come back with recommendations in April.

And here we are.

Councilmembers Herbold, Lewis, Mosqueda, and I are excited to announce we've come up with a way to honor that stakeholder work this year and to go bigger and bolder to build back better with bonds totaling $100 million for 2022. This approach will create jobs when we need them right now as we struggle out of the economic recession.

And bonds will enable us to fund bigger projects rather than piecemealing smaller amounts of money in dribs and drabs over several years.

Yes, the bigger projects would include major repairs to multimodal bridges, but the bond dollars can also provide immediate local matching dollars for larger projects, fund some of the transportation priorities called for by the stakeholder group, such as building new sidewalks faster, and the funding we need for more strategic planning for longer-term investments.

Finally, bonds should protect the VLF funds against attack from those who might seek to overturn these fees needed for our transportation infrastructure.

So Councilor Herbold, Lewis, Mosqueda, and I have crafted an amendment for the committee that we're circulating this morning.

This amendment would invest the funds this year as suggested by SDOT and the stakeholder group, but have SDOT return before the fall budget process with a bigger, bolder plan to have the city issue at least 100 million in bonds supported by the vehicle license fees.

We'll discuss this amendment this Wednesday at committee and probably wait to vote on the bill until the committee on Wednesday, May 5. I know you might have questions about this, but I'll keep rolling and finish my report.

Speaking of creating jobs, last week I visited the Apprenticeship Program for the Ironworkers Local 86 and met with apprentices in each of the four years of their program.

With the help of sponsors such as the Urban League, the Iron Workers Apprenticeship Program and other apprenticeship programs from the construction trade unions are a powerful path to living wage jobs in Seattle and can boost the prospects of many young people struggling with other issues in their lives.

It was moving to see this program in action and to know that by getting dollars out the door faster, we can have jobs ready for them when they become full-fledged iron workers.

a brief report from District 4. Last week, my staff attended the monthly meetings of East Lake Community Council and a discussion about crime prevention in Magnuson Park.

On Thursday evening, I participated in a community outreach meeting with the Low Income Housing Institute about the new tiny home village that will begin construction next month and open around July 4th.

I posted the presentation on my city council blog.

There are opportunities to volunteer, help build the tiny homes.

Just send an email to tinyhousesatlehigh.org.

Again, that's tinyhousesatlehigh.org.

I'd like to thank everyone who attended and asked questions, as well as the nearly 75 people from our district who wrote to support this effort.

This is a caring community that wants the best outcomes for the city.

I really want to thank Sound Transit for providing this land for the next two to three years.

This includes Abel Pacheco, who continues to support our district even in his role at Sound Transit.

I'd like to thank the city employees at Human Services Department, Department of Neighborhoods, Deputy Mayor Sixkiller, my legislative staff, Cara Valle, and the nonprofit doing the real work here, the Low Income Housing Institute.

Sharon Lee, Josh Castle, George Scarola.

We are experiencing a number of disturbing incidents in unauthorized encampments in and around the university district, including dangerous fires.

And we're eager to have this tiny home village open soon so we can get those experiencing homelessness inside where they can get the services they need.

Well, that concludes my report.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson.

I do see that Council Member Lewis has his hand up, so I'm gonna hand it over to him.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

Council Member Peterson, I want to start by thanking you for your leadership on that tiny house village in the University District that you just reported on.

You know, I think it is no coincidence that of the three villages that have been funded, this is the village that's expected to be open soonest.

I think it's a testament to the elbow grease that your office has put into making sure that all of the deadlines are being met and that that is being driven through.

So I really appreciate it and we are trying to emulate that effort in several additional villages.

So I wanted to start by saying my office really appreciates that and I'm sure that the people of the U district will appreciate that in short order.

I want to also speak to the striker amendment that I am co-sponsoring along with you, Councilmember Muscata and Councilmember Herbold that you mentioned earlier in your report.

I'm really looking forward to front loading and getting a lot of investment out the door earlier and sooner by really leveraging that vehicle license fee to drive this national conversation that we're seeing around Green New Deal, around massive infrastructure investments, to leverage the investments that we're seeing that could potentially come from the state.

Godspeed to Director Majewski, as we've all been mentioning earlier, in making sure Seattle gets a decent chunk of that investment out of the state legislature.

We have a massive infrastructure bill on the horizon from the federal government.

And one of the things that keeps me up at night in thinking about all of these big investments that are going to be coming to help Seattle with our infrastructure challenges is making sure that we're in a position to have resources online, ready to go, so that we can leverage those cooperations and partnerships across different levels of government to cobble together the funding packages needed to do big things, to repair our infrastructure, to create union jobs, and to make sure that we are making necessary improvements to bridges that were made for a different time and place.

Two weeks ago, I had the unfortunate experience of walking across the Ballard Bridge as a pedestrian, which I don't think I had done since high school.

That is not a bridge that was designed for bike and ped commuting in mind when it was put in.

We have a desperate backlog of making sure that people can walk, can bike, people with mobility challenges can get around this city in a way where you do not put your life at risk every time you want to go out and commute via a bike ride.

So these investments will help us do that.

I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

You know, I'll have to wait, I guess, till after May 5th because I'm not on the Transportation Committee, but do appreciate that we are moving forward with a bold proposal that can leverage regional resources and make much needed progress on a lot of the challenges we're facing.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you so much.

I just want to add to the points made by Council Member Lewis and Council Member Peterson.

Many, many thanks to Council Member Peterson for bringing this amendment forward.

As the City Auditor's Report released last summer noted the inadequacy.

Maintenance funding for our long-term health of our bridges really is critical since we depend on bridges in Seattle with our many waterways and hills.

Bringing forward this discussion now is so important for two reasons.

The first is that the move levy approved by Seattle voters in 2016 runs through 2024. So there will not be an opportunity to increase the amount of funding for bridges in a new levy for several years.

And so that's one reason why it's really important for the council to talk about other ways to provide funding for this urgent need.

The other reason why it's so important is that since the auditor's report was released, SDOT announced in mid-November that the estimated costs for retrofitting 16 bridges have increased significantly.

And this has resulted in SDOT deciding to move forward with just 11 of the 16 bridge seismic improvements included in the move levy.

So the cost estimates for the 16 bridges increased from 67 million to 730 million.

And again, this is another reason why we cannot continue to sort of kick the can down the road on these decisions, not just what bridges are critical for our attention, but what the funding sources are going to be in order to build back better.

and I think bonding is a good solution that we should be considering.

I also want to just real quickly mention the two amendments to the legislation in that council member Peterson is bringing forward today in full counsel that came out of his committee last week.

I mentioned this earlier, as did Council Member Peterson.

One is an amendment to Council Bill 120024. It simply adds a recital to the council bill recognizing the upcoming transfer of SPD's 911 dispatch.

to the new community safety and communication center.

And then when that transfer occurs, we'll need to update the surveillance impact report to align with the new organizational structure.

And then the second amendment.

more substantive and is intended to respond to input that we received from the ACLU.

My original amendment related to the holding on of data received from the automated license plate reader technology.

The amendment that came out of committee requests the police department to get back to us on the feasibility of retaining records on non-case-specific automated license plate reader data for no more than seven days.

After that passed, we heard back from the ACLU, a member of the working group, saying that their recommendation is for no more than 48 hours.

This recommendation is also contained within the workgroups surveillance impact report and so the amendment I will bring forward today will make the change from seven days to 48 hours.

Thank you.

Thank you Council Member Herbold, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I just wanted to echo my support for this effort and thank Council Member Peterson for his leadership to bring this forward.

You know, as we think about ways to not only make sure that our economy rebounds, but that we're doing so in an equitable way that allows for people to get back to work and good union living wage jobs, making sure that we're investing in infrastructure, is a really critical thing for us to be doing right now and doing so in a way that allows for people to get around the city in more equitable ways by making sure that our infrastructure is a solid includes bridge and bike and pedestrian.

is really important for us to be able to do.

And I think that this offers a really great win-win approach.

I also think that by expanding the universe of dollars, we can have planning dollars available.

And it's going to be critical as we think about the next iteration of future transit funds to make sure that we're doing that in an equitable way.

I know that's really important to TCC and other transportation advocates.

So looking forward to continuing to work on this with all of you and very strongly in support of bonding against these dollars so that we can have people get back to work in a really great way and also build the city of the future so that people can get around and not have to have a car and know that they'll be safe.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Roscada.

Any other comments or questions on that report?

All right, looks like there are no additional comments or questions.

Customer Peterson, did you have an opportunity to complete your report?

Yes, thank you, Council President.

Okay, great, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Let's continue down the line here.

Next up is Council Member Sawant, and then I will conclude this portion of the agenda.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, President Gonzalez, and good morning, everyone.

There are no items on today's city council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for its regular time, Tuesday, April 27th, at 9.30 a.m.

At that meeting, we will hear from community organizers about the Green New Deal.

We need to rapidly electrify our city's infrastructure and ultimately break the power fossil fuel companies have on our society.

We will also have at that committee meeting the initial discussion on the legislation from my office to prohibit the eviction of school children, their families and educators during the school year.

This will be an initial discussion with the hope of holding a vote in May.

This morning, my office posted a press conference to unveil this school children eviction defense bill, and we were happy to be joined by members of the Seattle Education Association, a public school student, and by school board director, Zachary DeBolf.

The bill is on today's introduction and referral calendar.

The bill, if passed as legislation, would prevent the evictions of school children and their families and educators during the school year.

It is common sense, but there are also enormous amounts of research that show that when children are evicted, it has a devastating impact on their academic achievement and development and on their mental health.

Imagine trying to focus on your schoolwork while losing your home.

For example, the Losing Home Report found that, quote, of evicted respondents with school-aged children, 85.7% said their children had to move schools after the eviction, and 87.5% reported their children's school performance suffered very much because of the eviction." There are many reasons for the impact on the academics. A child might be forced to move away from their school to another school or to a location that requires a long commute, Not to mention, how as a child can you do your homework when you're losing your housing stability? How can you even concentrate in school when this is happening? In 2018, the state found that nearly 4,200 Seattle public school students, children, were homeless at some point during the school year. That is a staggering 7% of all public school children. In practical terms, that means that in an average class of 30 students, two students will be homeless at some point during the school year. This is a racial justice and Black Lives Matter issue. Just as Seattle landlords evict Black tenants at a much higher rate than other tenants, we also see that Black students and other students of color disproportionately face homelessness. The 2018 state data found that fully 40% of homeless students were Black and 23% of homeless students were Latinx, even though Black and Latinx people constitute much smaller proportions of Seattle's overall population. For the high school class graduating that year, the Seattle PI found, quote, for the class of 2018, 55.2% of homeless students graduated on time compared to 84.5% of students who were housed, end quote. These are staggering data and they underscore why we need to pass this legislation. Preventing school year evictions will reduce at least this one form of systemic racism impacting students. I continue to think that the fact that the children are evicted in one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world is a damning condemnation of capitalism itself. But at the very least, the city has the power to stop evictions during the school year. I look forward to the discussion in the committee next week, and I hope council members will support this important renter rights and children's rights bill. Last week, my office also sent to the clerk for introduction legislation closing the end of lease loophole in the just cause eviction ordinance. The loophole has created a situation where landlords can refuse to renew a tenant's lease without any cause at all. The bill that we're putting forward follows the model of the legislation passed by a grassroots movement in Federal Way, which gathered signatures and eventually passed the Stable Homes Initiative, which created just-cause eviction protections in Federal Way and included renters on fixed-term leases. We intend this bill to be on the introduction and referral calendar next week. As many who have fought alongside our office for the last years know, my council office has been exploring opportunities to close this loophole, and we are especially inspired by the concrete victory in the city of Federal Way. We've been in touch with Council Member Morales' office, and we welcome the legislation that they have drafted, which I understand addresses the just cause loophole as well, but with a different approach. And as I've said many times, I really look forward to working with Council Member Morales' office and with tenants' rights activists and union members, and with the Stay Healthy Coalition, which my organization, Socialist Alternative, is a member of, to together develop the strongest bill that protects all tenants from no-cause evictions, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming discussions on how to accomplish that at our Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee. Last week, my office circulated a petition urging Mayor Durkin and City Council members to stop plans to resume harassing homeless neighbors and tens of thousands of Seattle renters without the luxury of a driveway with the 72-hour parking fines. Over 1,000 community members have signed the petition, and I believe hundreds of emails have been sent to the Mayor and the City Council. The 72-hour parking rule, which is ticketing or towing cars parked for 72 hours, criminalizes people for being poor and hassles anyone without a driveway or garage. For people forced to live in their cars, enforcing this rule, especially during a pandemic, could be catastrophic, costing them not only their vehicle, but also their only shelter and all their possessions. We need affordable social housing, not harassment of neighbors struggling to survive. I continue to urge Mayor Durkin to immediately extend the moratorium on the 72-hour parking rule. In addition to extending the moratorium, which is absolutely crucial, I also support the demand from real change vendors who are urging Mayor Durkin and the Seattle City Council to use funds from the Federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to open safe lots with wraparound services for vehicular residents. But I want to make it clear that won't be a substitute for restoring the monitorium and extending it. That is absolutely crucial. The impact that resuming the 72-hour parking fines would have on our homeless neighbors forced to live in vehicles was powerfully laid out by Neil Lampe at Real Change and others in a recent Crosscut article, and I urge members of the public who have not seen it yet to read it. Rapid dissemination of vaccinations is at the center of the strategy by public health professionals to stop the spread of COVID-19 virus. But globally, there are shockingly deep inequities in the access to the vaccine. This is putting countless lives at risk. Profit-driven brick pharmaceutical companies, with the blessing of the Biden administration, are blocking intellectual property waivers that would allow poor countries, formerly colonized countries, to produce the COVID-19 vaccine. Big pharmaceutical companies are making obscene profits, selling 87% of all vaccines to rich countries, with one out of every four receiving the vaccination to date. Meanwhile, in poor countries, only one out of every 500 people have received the COVID-19 vaccine. This is putting at risk the lives of billions. Furthermore, it could lead to a future re-emergence of the coronavirus, including new strains in rich countries. The Biden administration can help resolve the problem immediately, by waiving intellectual property restrictions for vaccines. This call is supported by hundreds of organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a COVID-19 vaccine must be seen as a global public good, a people's vaccine. Arguments that pharmaceutical companies deserve such or need such massive profits as a reward for innovation or that they are necessary to develop future vaccines and treatments have no basis in reality. These self-serving lies from the capitalist elite ignore, among other things, the overwhelming reliance of for-profit pharmaceutical corporations on publicly funded technology development. For instance, as the New York Times recently reported, Carolyn Currico, one of the heroes in the development of the mRNA technology for the vaccines, spent her career going from lab to lab, supported by government grants, never making more than $60,000 a year. That is why on Monday, April 26th, my office will bring forward a resolution for a vote by the city council to join the 400 plus organizations calling on the Biden administration to put people over profit and to stop blocking the intellectual property waivers for the COVID-19 vaccine. My office is currently drafting the resolution alongside community activists, and we will share the draft with council members and with members of the public as soon as it is ready, hopefully in the next couple of days. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Salon.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

All right, I don't see any hands raised.

I think Council Member Mosqueda, you do have your hand raised, but I think that might be from the time prior.

All right, so we're gonna keep going here.

I will give my report and will endeavor to be as quick as I can.

There's nothing from my committee on this afternoon's introduction and referral calendar.

I do have a couple of items of legislation for consideration at this afternoon's City Council meeting.

First item is item 1, Council Bill 120034. This bill authorizes the City to execute a collective bargaining agreement with Protech 17 Legislative Analyst Unit.

And we'll say more about that this afternoon.

But in sum, the CBA is a three-year agreement on wages, benefits, hours, and other working conditions from January 1st, 2019 through December 31st, 2021. It provides for wage adjustments of 4% in 2019, 3.6% in 2020, and 2.9% in 2021. I also have item four, which is resolution 32002. This is a levy.

I'm sorry, this is a resolution stating the council's ongoing support of the Best Starts for Kids levy and its renewal, and we will consider that at this afternoon's meeting.

Last week, my Governance and Education Committee met.

We heard two nominees to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

Their appointments will also be on this afternoon's full council agenda.

And as I mentioned, Resolution 3202 was also discussed in my committee meeting.

I'm happy to say more about that this afternoon.

Last week, as Council Member Lewis already mentioned, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority's Governing Committee met and received a briefing from incoming CEO Mark Jones at the meeting.

Mark made introductory comments at their first meeting with the Governing Committee and also made a request for the authority to hire an additional five senior employees beyond the five that the Governing Committee previously approved.

Because these additional positions were not initially budgeted for, The Governing Committee has asked that the CEO work with city and county staff to analyze the budget implications of this proposal and come back to the Governing Committee with a more detailed budget and plan for these positions.

The Governing Committee also decided to schedule a special meeting next month in May in order to evaluate this plan and potentially approve additional hires.

In the meantime, the CEO may begin the recruitment process and receive applications for these additional positions.

However, the CEO is not yet authorized to extend additional job offers until the governing committee grants official approval.

Special meeting again is set for Thursday, May 20th of next month.

This Thursday, there is a meeting of the PSRC executive board, among other items on this meeting agenda.

The executive board will take action to approve to approve the distribution of $580 million in coronavirus response and release Supplemental Appropriations Act funding.

I look forward to attending that meeting.

And that is all I have to report on those particular issues.

I did want to mention, colleagues, that I plan to bring a proclamation forward this afternoon as well at 2 o'clock.

We are going to take a roll on this particular proclamation, but this proclamation is in honor of Khoa Pham of the Pho Bok family.

Khoa passed away last month at the age of 35 from heart disease, and so this proclamation would mark April 21st, his birthday, as his very own day.

I will have more robust comments to make at this afternoon's meeting, but I know that this, the loss of Khoa to the Vietnamese American community and the broader Asian American community has been felt very deeply and widely, and do appreciate your all's support of acknowledging all of the contributions that he made to our community here in Seattle and beyond.

both as a business owner and also as just someone who was beloved in so many different circles.

So that being said, I'm happy to answer any questions about the proclamation if anyone has any questions about the proclamation before we call the roll.

Council Member Lewis, I see your hand is up.

I don't have questions about the proclamation, Madam President.

I just wanted to say one more thing following your presentation.

Okay, let me call the roll on the proclamation, and then we can hear from you, Council Member Lewis.

Okay, great.

Will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signature affixed to the proclamation honoring Kwa-Fam?

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Yes.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Members?

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that.

Okay, Council Member Lewis, you had a additional comment after my report.

Please go ahead.

But thank you, Madam President.

Just a slight correction from my report earlier this morning.

My staff informs me that I said our committee meeting for a select committee on homelessness strategies and investments would be May 8th.

It is actually going to be on May 6th.

So I apologize for the public and council colleagues if everyone rapidly changed their calendars.

You can now change it back.

But I just wanted to make that correction before the end of the morning.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

We don't want to needlessly create any sort of a scheduling flurry, so I appreciate the clarification.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions on my report?

All right, hearing none, we are going to go ahead and go through other items of business here.

We do have one executive session scheduled for today, and I'm going to introduce that matter.

So as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.

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

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

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

I expect the time of the executive session to end by 12 o'clock p.m.

excuse me, if the executive session is to be extended beyond 12 o'clock p.m.

today, I will return to open session and announce the extension and the expected duration.

Thank you.

do