Seattle City Council Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee 6/23/21

Good morning.

The June 23rd, 2020 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 AM.

I am Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Juarez?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Chair Strauss?

Present.

Four present.

Thank you.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of the City of Seattle begins our meetings with a land acknowledgement.

We begin this meeting by acknowledging we are on the traditional and ancestral lands of the first people of this region, past and present, represented in a number of tribes and as urban natives, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the people of this land.

We start with this acknowledgement to recognize the fact that we are guests on this land and should steward our land as such, as guests.

Starting our meetings with this acknowledgement is not a checklist or rote behavior.

This does not give us a passport to proceed however we desire.

And we must steward our work as guests as our time here, both as elected officials and on this earth is short.

And so we take this moment to pause and acknowledge the first people of this region past and present.

We have three items on the agenda today, a public hearing and vote on Council Bill 12081 which provides land use flexibility to affordable housing developments on religious institution lands.

A briefing and vote on Council Bill 120106, the landmark ordinance for the Bordeaux House on Capitol Hill, and a briefing from Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection on their quarterly permitting report.

We had previously planned to hear from OPCD today regarding the racial equity report that will help inform the comprehensive plan major update process.

That presentation has unfortunately been delayed, and we will expect to hear it as soon as possible.

Hopefully we will have time for it in July.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will be on Wednesday, July 14th, starting at 9.30 a.m.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on today's agenda.

Before we begin, I ask that everyone please be patient as we learn to operate the system in real time.

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included in meeting agendas, the City Council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this time is up to 10 minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they are registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak and would like to, you can sign up for the end of public comment by going to the council's website.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

The public comment calling line is different than the listen line, so please be aware and ensure you have not mixed the two phone numbers.

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

At that time, you must press star six, not pound six, star six.

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

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

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask you please wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask you please disconnect from the line.

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

There is a separate public hearing for item one, council bill 120081, the religious institution affordable housing bill.

So please reserve any comments about that legislation for the public hearing, which will occur directly after the public comment period.

If you have mixed up which public hearing or public comment you have intended to sign up for, please just note at the beginning of your comments and we'll get you in the right place.

Public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

And son, I am looking at the public comment list.

I do see folks in green listed for the public hearing.

I am checking my assumptions that I should wait to call on those individuals once we open the public hearing.

Is that correct?

Affirmative.

We have public hearing highlighted in green and public comment not highlighted.

Thank you.

For public comment today, we have Martha Baskin, followed by Michael Ramos, and then Megan Cruz.

We see Daryl Grothaus not present.

Daryl, if you are listening, please do call in now.

We have then Lou Bond, Suzanne Grant, followed by Barbara Bernard.

So we will start with Martha Baskin.

Good morning, Martha.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mr. Strauss and everyone.

Good morning to you.

We're getting a reprieve, aren't we, this morning?

Cool air.

Yes.

All right.

So I begin, yes?

Yes, please.

Here we go.

Okay.

So the climate crisis is here, and the city is doing its people and natural resources no favors by ignoring the power of trees to mitigate the crisis.

As trees grow, they help lessen the impacts of climate change by removing carbon from the air, storing it in the trees and soil, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the city's current tree regulations circa 2009 do little to incentivize tree protection during development while cold violations are difficult to enforce.

Big trees are often removed to facilitate development.

Even when building design could be altered to retain them.

It's my understanding that FTCI has multiple site inspectors, but only two arborists.

Since the benefits of trees extend beyond the parcels where they stand, this is unacceptable.

Tree loss threatens public health and climate resiliency.

Developers should be expected to respect these community assets.

City leaders should be willing to challenge them if they refuse.

The current tree code, however, does little to protect trees.

The city knows that it's tree protection ordinance is ineffective.

City councils and several mayors have repeatedly stated the need.

To update the regulations 12 years later, very little has improved.

And so I ask, what are you doing to protect the mighty Oak who shade provides relief against urban heat, flowering cherry trees with blossoms, take our breath away or the maple and beach whose leaves roots store carbon neighbors and advocates I've spoken with from Rainier beach and beacon Hill to victory Heights and Ballard.

want to see a moratorium on large tree removal until a new tree protection ordinance is passed.

They want to know how many trees and tree grows have been inventoried and how Seattle intends to achieve its 30% tree canopy goal in just 16 years from now.

Moreover, FDCI is even wanting to know how BIPOC and industrial and low-income communities are going to double or triple their tree canopy when they currently only have 10 to 15%.

Thank you.

Thank you, Martha.

I'm noticing a number of people are signed up today for items not on today's agenda.

Typically, I would ask you reserve your comments until the day that the item is on our agenda.

I will allow it today.

This is an exception to my standard rule.

I'm also seeing that Michael Ramos should be highlighted in green, as well as Daryl Krauthaus should be highlighted in green as well.

So next will be Megan Cruz, followed by Lou Bond, and then Suzanne Grant.

Megan, good morning.

I see you there.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I am here.

Great.

Hey, I'm here to talk today about power permitting, which will come up later in this meeting.

In the downtown core specifically, and some building requirements that were set to be in effect a year and a half ago, but still are not.

In 2018, the city realized that streets and alleys were being overrun by the double-digit increase in delivery trucks from e-commerce.

They decided new buildings would need to create space within them to help bear this burden.

So after three years of research and vetting, Director's Rule 12-2020 was sent out for comments and SDCI told the community it would be in place by January 2020. And the rule consisted of several requirements that seem like common sense.

For example, loading berths have to be accessible within the physical constraints of the alley.

You can't just draw a box on a plan and say it's going to work.

You'd have to have turn radius diagrams and trucks couldn't stick out into the alley.

And importantly, new residential towers, some of which we're seeing hold 1,000 people, would need a loading berth.

So these rules were vetted by developers, the Downtown Seattle Association, and groups of commercial and residential stakeholders.

And I participated.

But in October 2019, the rule was dropped without any explanation.

And that was far before COVID hit.

And since then, what was once a real priority has just dropped off anyone's radar.

And it's not an academic or technical matter.

It really matters to people's lives.

I live on a transit-only block, 3rd Avenue, in a building and surrounded by other buildings without internal loading.

And so the only way we can maintain our homes and businesses is for a functional street and alley system.

So today I'm asking to find out why we aren't requiring new towers to do the basic things to keep the right-of-ways open to everyone.

Let's get this director's rule back in place and get Seattle downtown sustainable and resilient for the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Megan.

Always great to hear you.

Up next, we have Lou Bond, followed by Suzanne Grant, and last, Barbara Bernard.

Lou.

Thank you, Chair Strauss and the rest of the committee here.

I'm speaking specifically on number three, SDCIs, I really want to bring to light that we really do need full impact studies on these alleys.

I followed the process for the Cromer building on 2nd Avenue between Pine and Pike, and everything is now going to be focused through the alley.

As Megan said earlier, Our Third Avenue properties are bus only on Third Avenue.

Our alley is our only source for delivery, unloading and loading for our commercial and office tenants.

I went through the whole process of following along that development.

I'm not against development at all, but I think there needs to be a comprehensive plan neighborhood by neighborhood on the full impact that's going to happen.

This alley was already considered a non-functioning, non-viable alley because of its restrictions on only having a 16-foot width.

That's not going to change, so the ability to have two-way traffic is never going to happen.

and then to force all of their parking and all of their delivery, et cetera, to be on the alley only is really going to put a burden on all the neighbors and create a long-term negative effect between neighbors, which is not what we want.

So I just ask that Director Nathan Torgelson and your crew really fully vet out these alleys and what's the best for everyone involved so that we have a progressive approach to the development.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lou.

Great to hear you this morning.

Next, we have Suzanne Grant.

I wonder if we'll get a wonderful song again this morning.

Maybe not.

I thought about singing.

I was thinking about singing to you, Council Member Dutroux.

But I'm speaking to Council Bill 12081. Shall I continue?

Yes, please.

Good morning.

OK, great.

I didn't understand your intro.

Council Bill 12081 allows more car and use of more of the area for housing.

It is possible to- Susanne?

And Noah, if you could restart the time.

Do you want to speak at the public hearing to this bill?

That's up next.

Is that, okay.

Is that where I should be speaking?

That's what I thought you maybe said.

Oh yeah.

I did not realize that that, sorry, that was my mistake.

Son, if you could list Susanne in green and we'll come back to you in just a minute, Susanne.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Last on the public comment list for today is Barbara Bernard, and then we will transfer into the public hearing on CB 120081. Barbara, good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Barbara Bernard, and I wanted to comment today on SBCI's agenda item regarding permitting reports, and I just wanted to Kind of dovetail, whatever they share today with their permitting report, how permitting.

Removing the trees is starting to, uh, become a extreme issue.

And I'd like to have the land use committee and the city council to support and enact a moratorium on large tree removal, anything 24 inches and larger until a tree ordinance is passed.

I listened again, as I always do in these meetings to your land use acknowledgement at the beginning.

And my heart always swells when I hear it, but then I realized that it's so disingenuine and it's just not fair for us any longer to say we're going to respect the time that we're here and the choices that we make when it's clear that what we're doing to our large trees is not following that belief.

Every week I made aware of more exceptional trees being cut down.

I guess I'm the neighborhood tree person now because People from all the neighborhoods are sending me emails or finding me on Instagram and telling me about different trees coming down in their neighborhoods and how many of the birds are being impacted because it's nesting season.

And I'm going through such an extreme grief right now because there is nothing I can do.

And I just feel that we know we're at a point, we know it's undisputed that there's climate crisis and that the large trees may actually be the only thing left to help us.

So why is the city going against its own climate plan and its own canopy growth goals and allowing the removals to continue to happen?

Thank you for letting me speak.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Barbara.

And thank you for speaking with us this morning.

Son, can you confirm there are no more public registrants for public comment?

confirm there are no more public comment registrants.

I'll get that language correct one day.

Seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

Our first item of business today is a public hearing and vote on Council Bill 120081. Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 120081. An ordinance relating to affordable housing on properties owned or controlled by religious organizations modifying existing development standards to facilitate creation of affordable housing.

Thank you.

And I'm very excited to have this legislation before us today.

It will unlock more possibilities for affordable housing across Seattle and allow several important affordable housing projects to move forward.

We were first briefed on this legislation at our last committee meeting in May.

Following the public hearing today, I plan to ask to suspend the rules so that we can vote on this legislation today.

I do have a standard where I like to have bills before us in two committees, and that is why we had the public hearing.

why we had a briefing on this at the last committee.

Before we begin the public hearing, we're joined by Allie Panucci of Council Central staff, who's filling in for Ketel Freeman this week.

Allie, could you provide just a very, very brief overview of the legislation and the amendments before us today?

Please, at this time, since we have all of these public registrants signed up, I want to be respectful of their time.

So just maybe a very high-level overview, and then we'll get into the details after the public hearing.

Thank you.

Council member Strauss.

I'm happy to provide a brief a brief summary and for for today's discussion, I wasn't planning to go into great detail on the bill, but I'm happy in general, but I'm happy to answer questions once we move after the public hearing and move into a discussion of amendments.

Um, so Council Bill 120081 would implement substitute House Bill 1377 enacted at in Washington State in 2019 and now codified in RCW 36.78.545.

That statute requires that local jurisdictions must allow an increased density bonus with local needs for any affordable housing development of any single family or multifamily residents located on property owned or controlled by a religious organization.

So as proposed, Council Bill 12081 would establish eligibility requirements in the Land Use Code and bonus provisions for properties owned or controlled by religious organizations that are redeveloped with affordable housing.

As introduced, the affordability levels would be the minimum established by statute, all residential units affordable to households at or below 80% of area median income for at least 50 years, and the proposed bonus provisions vary by zone.

So this proposed legislation would fulfill the requirements of the state statute.

There are four potential amendments proposed by Council Member Peterson today that I will walk through with the committee after the public hearing.

And that's all I have.

Oh, thank you, Ali.

Could you, just before the public hearing, could you give us just a top line summary of those four amendments?

Happy to.

So the first amendment would look at the affordability requirements, looking at an averaging of 60% of AMI rather than 80% of AMI.

Um, the Second Amendment would increase the minimum term of affordability to 75 years from 50 years.

That's in the bill is introduced.

The Third Amendment would define controlled by for the purpose of establishing qualifying entities that can participate in the bonus program and a Fourth Amendment that wasn't posted to the agenda but was distributed this morning and will be added to the record after the fact would request an annual report on the implementation of this legislation.

Thank you, Ali.

Very helpful.

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

We are continuously looking for ways to fine tune this process.

and adding new features that allow for additional means of public participation in our council meetings.

I will moderate the public hearing in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

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

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

The link is also posted on today's agenda.

This phone number is different than the council listen line.

make sure that you have called in i am seeing a reverend robert jeffrey not present i'm seeing reverend curtis taylor not present and daryl grothouse not present if you would like to speak please Please call in now.

Thank you, sorry, I was looking at the list.

Please begin, once I call on your name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt if you've been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it is your turn to speak.

Please then press star six, not pound six, star six, and begin speaking by stating your name and the item in which you are addressing.

As a reminder, the public comment should relate to council bill 120081. If you have comments about something that is not, this bill or on today's agenda, you can always provide written comments by emailing my office.

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

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

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

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask you please disconnect from this line, and if you would like to continue following the meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The public hearing on Council Bill 120081 is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

We have Robert, Robert Jeffrey, listen is not present followed by Asia corporate, then Michael Ramos, Dale Grodd house, still seeing not present, followed by Suzanne grant, Naomi see Councilmember Richard Conlin and Reverend Curtis Taylor, we will begin with Asia corporate followed by Michael and then.

Suzanne, Reverend Robert Jeffrey, and Daryl Krauthaus, if you are listening, please do call in now.

We see you listed as not present, as well as Reverend Curtis Taylor.

Good morning, Asia.

I see you're present, and feel free to take it away at your convenience.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Athea Corbray with the Lone Housing Institute, and I'm speaking on Council Bill 12081. I've called in support of the passage of legislation for affordable housing on religious organization property.

And we understand that there was some concerns with the proposed ordinance that potentially allowed up to 100% of units in a development to be leased at 80% AMI.

And so I'm stating my support for the amendment for lowering the income targets.

We're in support of allowing some units at 80% AMI, as long as the average is at least 60% or below.

as this is also aligned with the tax credit rule that allows for income averaging.

This legislation is incredibly important in recognizing valuable land owned by religious institutions, many of which have historically served communities and communities of color throughout the city.

This legislation increases capacity for providing daily needed affordable housing while supporting those culturally relevant institutions.

By providing an increase in allowable height and allowable floor area ratio, our religious partners with land and a mission to serve their communities will be able to provide responsive, safe, and affordable housing for our neighbors in need especially those who have been displaced from gentrifying neighborhoods.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Up next, we have Michael Ramos, followed by Daryl Grothaus, still not present, Suzanne Grant, and Naomi See.

Michael, good morning.

Good morning, Chair Strauss and members of the committee.

My name is Michael Ramos, and I serve as Executive Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle.

The Church Council has engaged congregations and people of faith in Seattle toward the common good and a more just society since 1919. Over the last 40 years, our churches have served the city by providing an array of social services and ministries at the intersection of homelessness and affordable housing as part of our mission to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Currently, I serve on the Affordable Housing Committee for King County.

We have long asked the city to do more to provide redress for the gentrification and displacement that have particularly impacted communities of color.

On behalf of our faith communities discerning stewardship of their properties, which could add to the mix of low-income housing in our city, I thank you for considering this legislation as a locally tailored response to HB 1377, for which we advocate at the state legislature.

A path that allows for more viable housing development and more units honors the hopes of faith communities to house the unhoused and create homes so that all our residents can thrive.

Our churches need greater flexibility in order to execute faithfully in our vision for maximum contribution to the stock of affordable housing.

The proposed amendments, while well-meaning, will severely affect the ability of our congregations to be able to develop housing successfully on the land they own and occupy.

Churches need to partner in order for their projects to become a reality.

Narrower owning and controlling language will mean congregations will not be able to take advantage of the density bonus.

Extending the timeframe for guaranteed affordability from 50 to 75 years is a further disincentive for workable projects.

Please do not accept the proposed amendments and please delay voting on the measure until appropriate.

Clarifying language with stakeholders can be determined.

In this way, the original purpose of facilitating faith community development of their assets can be enhanced rather than unwillingly diminished.

When faith communities have flexibility to develop consistent with their mission and values, the city and all who live here win.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

We see that Daryl Groddhouse still not present, so we will move on to Suzanne Grant, Naomi See, and Council Member Richard Conlin.

Suzanne, good morning.

Thanks for working with us to get you in the right place.

Good morning.

My name is Suzanne Grant, and I'm commenting on Council Bill 120081, which is a good bill, but it allows more FAR and use of more of the area for housing.

It is possible to increase both.

that there needs to be a mandate for a creative solution from the developer and the architect that will include retaining any mature and exceptional trees that are on the property.

Certainly with the heat waves and the anger that are being experienced more often in our city.

We need language in the bill that includes a moratorium on large tree removal until the tree ordinance is finally passed.

Without any mention of protection for trees and only increased exemptions, more FAR allowances, How are the disadvantaged communities and those living in multifamily housing who currently have just 10 to 15 percent tree canopy cover going to double or triple their tree canopy cover to achieve Seattle's 30 percent target canopy cover in just 16 years.

That's the 2030 promise.

CM Strauss you know my advocacy work.

CM Lewis you're my neighborhood council member and CM Peterson you have worked the hardest to try to save our trees and I highly respect your dedication.

And Director Torgelson use your power to retain the mature and exceptional trees of the neighborhoods where the density is planned to increase.

Listen to Suzanne Simard and save our mother trees.

Quoting from the book by Justin Martin genius of place the life of Frederick Frederick Law Olmsted who designed some of our best parks.

These trees have quote unconscious influence and have striking ways that people's people's spiritual states can be shaped by their environment.

Scenery has a powerful ability to ease a person's melancholy and we certainly need all the help we can get in our existential climate crisis.

Delay voting on this bill until tree protection is maintained.

And lastly I would like I would like for Director Torgelson to provide the totals of the inventory by SBCI of the number of trees and tree groves that have been removed in the past few years.

Please share this information with us Director and do not skip it in your quarterly report this time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Suzanne.

Next, we have Naomi C., followed by Council Member Richard Conlin.

And then we still have Reverend Robert Jeffrey not present, Dale Grothaus not present, Reverend Curtis Taylor not present.

If you are listening, please do call in now.

Naomi, good morning.

Good morning.

Hope everyone's well.

I just want to say I'm incredibly excited to speak on this bill today as it is the culmination of the incredible advocacy work that our church partners, especially central district pastors who are committed to using their land and support of their land to support mitigating gentrification and displacement of their communities.

Given that many churches were systemically under zoned in areas of high opportunity, this bill is crucial for offering faith institutions an opportunity to truly serve their communities in a way that increases affordability in one of our greatest crises, which is housing and homelessness.

My colleague, Isaiah, really did a great job of the overview and saying it all about our partnership with these churches.

But I just want to reiterate our support for Amendment 1, which would give us flexibility to do income averaging off of tax credit policies while at the same time enabling us to serve the lowest income individuals who are at the greatest risk of displacement and houselessness.

So again, just want to echo our gratitude for forwarding this bill and really looking forward to all the work we can do together to increase the provision of housing under this.

Thanks.

Thank you, Naomi.

And Mr. Ahn, I saw that the public comment timer had paused.

I understand that Naomi spoke within time limit.

Just wanted to check.

Oh, there it goes again.

When you reset, I will call on Council Member Richard Conlon.

We are ready to go.

Good morning, Council Member Conlon.

You'll need to press star six.

There you are, good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here.

I'm here actually on behalf of my company, which is a partnership called Conlin Columbia, which is a values driven for profit that promotes affordable housing and arts and cultural facilities.

We're working with several churches on these kinds of developments in particular with one church not highlighted in the report, which is a great example of the benefits.

This congregation wants to take its faith into action and to maintain its church.

It's got mixed zoning of NC 55 and single family.

And the plan is to demolish the building and build a new NC building with a ground floor with community businesses, human services, child care, and the 3,400 square foot sanctuary.

And then to have 60 to 70 units of affordable at 50% or less in the NC building.

It's located on a frequent transit route and in an urban village.

The intent is to respect the single-family neighbors by putting potentially no more than townhouses on the single-family zone property.

But the wonderful thing that this legislation will do is allow either maximizing the stick-built capacity for this site, which as I said is NP55 right now, or allow us to experiment with cross-laminated timber, a CLT development.

It improves the financials, will provide more affordable housing, including family housing, allows flexibility so that the sanctuary can be at a height that will work well for the church as a whole, provides benefits for those who need housing, for the church, for the city as a whole.

It's a win-win-win for all.

So we want to strongly support this legislation and encourage the council to move forward with it.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you, Council Member.

It's great to hear you're still serving our community and thank you for everything you're doing for Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Next, we have Reverend Robert Jeffrey, whom I see is now present.

We still have Daryl Grothaus and Reverend Curtis Taylor not present.

Daryl and Reverend Taylor, if you are listening, please do call in.

Good morning, Reverend Jeffrey.

How are you?

Good morning.

It's great to be here.

My name is Robert Jeffrey.

I'm senior pastor of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.

I've been there for over 35 years.

During that time, we've seen considerable gentrification of our community.

We've seen many of our members having to move out and move as far away as Tacoma.

Our church has been involved for the last few years in creating housing and working with Lehigh.

a housing organization in our city to help create housing for people who have been gentrified and people who now are homeless as well.

So I call in to support this legislation because I believe that in order to maximize the housing that is needed in our community, we need this kind of legislation to address a really acute problem going on in the community now.

Our church has land.

We are working with Lehigh to now create probably around 85 units of housing.

With this legislation, we would be able to create those units.

And it is very important to us to be able to do that, not just to bring back into the city our members, but to bring back into the community people who have been pushed out of the community and who would like to return.

It is my hope that the council will look favorably upon this legislation.

Thank you, Reverend Jeffrey.

Thank you.

And son, can you confirm with me that Daryl Grothaus and Reverend Taylor are not present?

There are no more other public hearing registrants.

Great.

Daryl and Reverend Taylor, if you're listening, please do send your comments in to my office should you desire to have them recorded in the official record.

And at this time, I do not have anyone further remotely present to speak.

That was our last speaker remotely present, and the public hearing on Council Bill 12081 is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who provided comments today.

I would like to now return to Ali for a more in-depth presentation of the underlying bill, and then we will move on to the amendments.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, committee members.

Just to quickly summarize at a high level what the proposed legislation is, this legislation would allow additional development capacity for properties owned or controlled by a religious organization, provided that all of the housing created is income restricted, whether rental or ownership housing, and that all housing is affordable to households with incomes at or below 80% of area median income.

with an affordability term of at least 50 years, including if the property is sold.

And so, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, the proposed legislation provides additional development capacity for development projects that meet those requirements, and the additional capacity varies by zone.

I'm not going to go into details of all of the changes, but as an example, in single family zones, An additional 0.5 floor area ratio of development capacity and a 15% increase in lot coverage would be allowed.

In commercial zones with heights up to 85 feet, two additional floors could be achieved.

An additional 0.25 to 1.5 floor area ratio could be utilized and there would be some exemptions for development in urban centers and villages and within a quarter mile of frequent transit service.

So that just provides a couple of examples of how the additional development capacity varies by zone.

And so unless there are questions on the underlying bill, I would be ready to walk through the amendments for the committee.

Great.

And I just want to check with Mr. Ahn.

I'm seeing that I need to suspend the rules.

Do we need to do that now or after we hear the briefing on the amendments?

Either way, you just need to suspend them before you take any votes.

Okay, why don't we do that now just to make it clean?

Unless there are questions from my colleagues, I will now ask that we suspend the rules to allow us to proceed with voting on the amendments in this legislation.

I move to suspend the rules to allow us to vote on the same day as the public hearing.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to suspend the rules to allow a vote on the same day as the public hearing.

Will the clerk please call?

And clerk, is this part when we vote on, do I need to vote on suspending the rules?

You do.

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll on suspending the rules to allow a vote on the same day as a public hearing?

Council Member Peterson?

Abstain.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

We will now move on to discussing the four amendments from Councilmember Peterson.

Three that were included in the agenda and one that was walked on.

Councilmember Peterson, would you like to begin or would you like Ali to start?

Thank you, Chair.

I think Ali Panucci from our City Council Central staff did a great job summarizing the amendments.

And if I may, I can just add some comments now.

I also want to thank Ketel Freeman who worked with us on these earlier.

The council bill, as we know, 12081, is implementing the new state law, substitute House Bill 1377, which allows religious institutions to increase density on land they own or control if they provide affordable housing for several decades.

The three amendments posted already online would, in my view, refine the bill from the executive by making sure we serve our very low-income neighbors.

While Amendment 1 still enables some of the units to serve residents earning as much as 80% of AMI, the area median income, the overall average must serve those at 60% of area median income.

So bringing that overall average down to serve lower income neighbors.

Amendment 2 increases, would increase the number of years the project must remain affordable from 50 years to 75 years, which matches a key provision of the mandatory housing affordability program.

Amendment three would close in what I view as a loophole on the definition of the word controlled, so that the religious organizations maintain meaningful control over their properties.

And the fourth and final amendment, which I circulated to committee members this morning, simply asks the executive for annual reporting on the implementation of the ordinance, such as the affordability restrictions used, the public subsidy used, if any, and the organizational structures.

happy to answer questions about the amendments.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Ali, would you like to walk us through each amendment?

Happy to, Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I won't go into great detail because Council Member Peterson covered much of what I was going to say, but perhaps I'll just walk through one by one for purposes of the discussion and vote, and if there are any questions from you or your colleagues on that.

So Amendment 1, as Council Member Peterson described, would lower the average affordable housing income eligibility threshold to 60% of AMI for renter households.

It would retain the 80% area median income or AMI requirement for home ownership units.

So as an example, what this might look like if you had 100 unit building built under this new requirement, you could meet the, meet or do better than the average 60% required if there was a mix of 30, 60 and, of units that would be affordable to households at 30, 60 and 80% of AMI with about a, 30 at 30% AMI, 40 at 60% AMI, and 30 of the units at 80% of AMI.

So that's just one example of the type of mix of units that could be included in a property and meet this new requirement with the averaging.

And I'll leave it at that, if there are questions.

Thank you, Allie, that was very helpful.

Colleagues, I guess I'll, relay my thoughts on these amendments and if anyone else has questions, please be ready.

I want to thank Councilmember Peterson for these amendments.

I think they have good intention.

However, I will not be supporting the three amendments today.

I've heard We heard in public comment from Bill Ramos, the Chair of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, with concerns about these amendments.

I think that further stakeholdering is needed and necessary for each of these.

And in particular, I want to thank Council Member Peterson for bringing the Fourth Amendment today, which will give us reporting data for a year from now on how we might refine this policy.

One of the reasons that I won't be supporting the amendments today is because I think that further stakeholdering is necessary and that many have already been relying on the rules in the substitute house bill that was passed by the legislature as a vehicle as an understanding of the framework and how this legislation will be passed here at City Council.

For Amendment 1, while most properties that utilize this legislation will be receiving a subsidy from the Office of Housing that requires the affordability to 60% of area median income or below, if a church is able to provide affordable workhouse housing without city funds, This is the flexibility that is needed in the current legislation that does not include the amendment.

I believe we should encourage this flexibility rather than prevent it.

And I think that a year of receiving the data regarding this will be important to make a fully informed decision.

I'm not completely opposed to the intent of this amendment.

I'm just not comfortable at supporting it at this time.

I am open to a continued conversation about whether changes like this are necessary, and I would like to see how the program plays out before we make those changes.

So again, Council Member Peterson, I appreciate this amendment.

I appreciate the intent that it comes with.

I won't be supporting it today, and I leave the door open to continue this conversation.

colleagues.

Any questions?

Uh, Vice Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair.

I also want to thank Council Member Peterson.

I know you reached out yesterday, taking me a heads up on some of the amendments that you're considering.

I appreciate them being posted on the agenda as well.

I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry I wasn't able to get a chance to review those until late last night and didn't get a chance to ask you some questions in advance.

But Council Member I appreciate the ongoing intent, I believe, to try to make sure that there's greater clarification that the dollars are truly being used to create the lowest affordable housing.

I think the concern that I have echo what the good Chair Strauss has just said.

and that there's greater stakeholder input that is needed, but most notably, and I'm not sure if Ali, you or Tracy Ratcliffe have had a chance to opine about this, but my concern with this type of restriction is always about whether or not we are leaving out the ability for braided funding that allows for the projects to be fully funded.

I know our intent is to always make this for as low as an income population as possible, recognizing though that sometimes having 60 to 80% AMI on-site allows for the creation of the 0 to 30 or 0 to 50% AMI housing.

So in an effort to try to make this focused on our lowest income, if we don't also have that sort of workforce housing element included, sometimes it makes projects not even viable.

And that's my concern with these late amendments.

And I don't know, Tracy, if you, or excuse me, Ali, if you had any, additional comments on the viability of projects if you scope it to the AMI amount.

So, Council Member Mosqueda, thanks for the question.

I would say, in general, most of the city's programs do target or, and in some cases, require a 60% or below area median income.

Like, for example, the mandatory housing affordability program for rental housing.

requires that units meet a 60% AMI requirement.

This amendment would actually be similar to some of the allowances under the low-income housing tax credit program that allows for some income averaging.

So this amendment as drafted would allow for that mixing of unit types.

Some could be up to 80%, and some could be as low as zero or anywhere.

anywhere in between as long as the overall average is 60%.

But it would not allow for a unit at 90% AMI or that type of thing.

So it does allow some flexibility.

I think what the committee heard in briefing from Director Alvarado from the Office of Housing was that they had established the 80% requirement in part because in looking at that, that may be an option where a religious organization might be able to self, you know, fund the housing project and be able to sustain that without seeking public subsidy.

However, if they're seeking public funds, it is likely that the affordability requirements would be, you know, would be lower than 80% AMI in most cases.

So, you know, that is sort of the trade off, I think, that the director laid out for the committee in the previous discussion.

Thank you.

That was very helpful.

I think that it is clear if churches or developing organizations are using city funds, they have to provide affordable housing below 60% area median income.

This additional 20% allows for some of that flexibility to see if the market will provide for this.

And so I just want to check Council Member Lewis, do you have any questions at this time?

I'm ready to vote, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to make a motion?

Thank you.

I appreciate the discussion today.

I think that my approach was, you know, this came from Olympia and I was trying to tailor it to our goals, which I know we share to have more affordable housing.

And by that, I mean low income housing.

So 60% of the low, and I know there are different approaches to that.

I still think it's the right amendment, obviously, which is why I put it forward.

So happy to, If for some reason it doesn't pass today, we'll hope that other amendments pass, or at least Amendment 4, so that we can monitor this and find out how is it being used.

Because I think that we are conferring a benefit to the marketplace that does not exist today of that additional density.

And I personally think we should be getting that additional public benefit of the lower-income housing.

But I appreciate being able to make my case today and commit it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Would you like to move?

And I'm committed to working with you on all of that.

So yes, would you like to move the amendment, or would you like to hold the amendment?

Yes, thank you, Chair.

I'd like to move Amendment 1 as shown as an attachment to today's agenda.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded.

Mr. Ahn, would you please call the roll?

Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Chair Strauss?

No.

Two in favor, two opposed.

Does that motion carry?

Fail.

That motion fails.

Thank you.

Motion fails.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to cover Amendment 2?

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Yes, Amendment 2, as Ali had described earlier, would simply extend the length of the affordability period.

So right now, the state law wrote it, the bipartisan crafters of the state law, they wrote it as just 50 years.

And I think that public benefits should go on for longer, and so 75 years.

As somebody who has extensive experience financing affordable housing, both the construction and the preservation of it, I know that the change in from 50 to 75 will not impact the ability to get to secure financing for these types of projects and think that this will be an appropriate public benefit, additional public benefit for the the zoning benefit that we would be conferring with this legislation.

So I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I also share your value in hoping that these, the affordability will be The affordable units will be held as long as possible in perpetuity if we can.

One tool that I have seen the city use is that as the building continues in its life, it can receive additional funds from the Office of Housing and that extends the covenants on the deed.

And so if a building is built, And within 50 years it needs upgrades or improvements in any way that use office of housing dollars those covenants are extended for another 50 years.

keeping those affordability levels for a longer period of time and at 60% area median income.

I know you know this, I'm just stating this for the record.

And so I know from a project in my district that I am working on, there are already, there's some confusion about the implementation currently of of current law.

And so by making this change today without being able to engage the stakeholders ahead of time, I believe that it is adding more confusion in a time that we need clarity for this specific project.

And so again, with this amendment, I won't be supporting it today, and I'm open to continuing the conversation because I think that your intent is in the right place.

And at this time, I also don't believe that imposing a higher burden in order to participate in the program is necessary because we have that secondary check of ensuring that a building that needs renovations or improvements will then continue the low-income housing affordability.

Colleagues, do you have questions, comments on Amendment 2?

Or Ali, would you like to share any other information?

Chair Strauss, I think you and Council Member Peterson covered it.

Thank you.

Great.

Vice Chair Mosqueda or Council Member Lewis, any questions?

Yeah, Vice Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

This is more of a question.

Allie, my understanding is that the 50-year standard is the standard life of the Affordable Housing Project that all other Office of Housing Projects usually assume.

So if we had a 75-year extension here, that would only apply to church properties.

Is that the discrepancy?

Yeah.

Council Member Mosqueda, typically most of our firms require a 50-year term.

And as Council Member Peterson described, the state statute requires at least a 50 year term.

So that's the minimum required.

I will note that the mandatory housing affordability program for development projects that choose the performance option, that does have a 75 year term of affordability.

So this would be consistent with that program and monitoring of that program.

Thank you, good question, and thank you, Ali, for that additional clarification.

Council Member Lewis, I saw you pop up, just wanted to double check to see if you have any comments or thoughts.

I just wanted to say I don't have any questions at this time.

Thank you.

And Council Member Peterson, final word, and would you like to move the amendment?

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

And really good discussion and good point about how the Office of Housing typically deals with the end of the 50-year term where they'll, if they're renewing their financing, they'll renew that requirement that their affordability stay on for another 50 years.

I was also thinking about when they're not using Office of Housing money, want that 75 years, and it was to be consistent with the mandatory housing affordability program on site, just to clarify that.

But thank you for this discussion, and I would like to move Amendment 2 as posted on the agenda.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 12081 as shown in Amendment 2. Mr. Allen, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Chair Strauss?

No.

Two in favor, two opposed.

And the motion fails.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson for bringing it forward.

I do look forward to working with you as we receive the data from amendment four, which I think will pass.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to discuss amendment three?

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Yes, this this amendment is a little more complicated.

The goal is to clarify the state bill, which simply says own or controlled by a religious organization.

So the word controlled by the words controlled by it's it's very open ended and so want to make sure that the religious institutions maintain meaningful control of their properties that they're not taken advantage of by for that the intent of the l or controlled by and we w it's got meaningful contro to define that in this am would have to end this is a way we would define it you know from a lending perspective underwriting to make sure who has control of of the organization and so it's typically what's this amendment which is at least fifty one percent ownership or they have a uh...

specific management role in the organization.

So it could be owned 99% by a for-profit low-income housing tax credit investor, which is standard.

But as long as the nonprofit or religious institution has management, some management control such as, and the amendment uses a language such as, so it's not overly restrictive, such as a general partner of a limited partnership such as the managing member of a limited liability company, which are the two standard ownership entities that we would use.

I would be willing to inject some additional flexibility in this, but the idea is that we don't have this loophole of what the term controlled by means.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

And consistently with the other two amendments, I am open to continuing the conversation and unfortunately will not be supporting this amendment as well.

I like your intent of narrowing the definition.

I think that we need, as we heard from, again, Bill Ramos, the chair of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, that we need more time and conversation to get this right.

State legislation that this bill is based on was intentionally left broad in setting the definition of controlled in recognition that for churches to make affordable housing deals work, they often have to be creative in how those deals are structured.

I'm concerned that this definition before us right now could be too narrow and exclude projects that would otherwise be eligible to provide units of affordable housing.

For example, if a church wanted to partner with a non-profit affordable housing developer and sell their property to that developer while working on the project, this amendment could preclude them from taking advantage of the base of this bill, which would be contrary to what we are trying to achieve and what the state has passed this legislation in order for us to achieve.

It is not It's also not clear to me exactly how this amendment would be interpreted and implemented, something that I've found time and time again.

We have certain intentions here when we pass laws, and the interpretation can oftentimes be very different.

This is the one important aspect of the whereas non-binding clauses so that we're able to share our intent with the legislation that comes after the whereas clauses.

I am concerned that this amendment could be interpreted to prevent a church from signing a long-term ground lease with a nonprofit developer, or require a church to own and manage the affordable housing units themselves, which is a job often left better to housing providers.

And that is why, again, support your intent, can't support this amendment today, and open to continuing the conversation.

Colleagues, do you all have questions, or Allie, is there anything that you would like to add?

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I don't have anything to add at this time, but happy to answer questions.

Great.

Seeing no questions, Vice Chair and Council Member Lewis, Council Member Peterson, any last words?

Would you like to move the amendment?

Thank you very much, Council Member.

Oh, excuse me.

Yeah, go for it.

Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson, for again, bringing forward this amendment.

And again, I appreciate the Chair's comments throughout this about the intent behind it.

I do want to continue to see how we can get greater clarity on whether or not the intent is being achieved.

I think the concern that I have is similar to what the Chair just mentioned.

We have done a lot of work to follow up on the state legislatives.

to reduce barriers, making sure that they can have as simple of a process to partner with affordable housing developers or nonprofit organizations to use their property to create what we need in the city, which is more affordable housing.

And I do worry about a definition that could be perceived as potentially restricting them in how they partner with these organizations to create that affordable housing.

I think that there's already strong affordability requirements here.

partnering with organizations and non-profit developers.

that can help them accomplish what they'd like to see grow on the site, we'll serve those, who I think the sponsor's intent is trying to really center these amendments on.

But I just don't wanna do anything that inadvertently adds additional barriers when we have yet to see how the partnership is currently gonna be defined.

So let's do everything we can to help these nonprofit, excuse me, these churches partner with organizations to build the housing.

This has been something that I have been hearing about for the last three years while on council, people are saying, I got all this church property.

Hardly anybody drives to church anymore.

A lot of folks are walking and they really want to use this space.

So let's do everything we can to turn that underutilized space into housing and reduce barriers.

So I'll be voting no on this as well.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Council Member Lewis, any thoughts?

No, Mr. Chair, I'm ready to vote.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, last word.

And would you like to move the amendment?

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, I'd like to move Amendment 3 as posted on the online agenda.

Great, second.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 12081 as shown in Amendment 3. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Abstain.

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Chair Strass?

No.

One in favor, two opposed, one abstention.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk, the motion fails.

Council Member Peterson, thank you for sending out the amendment four to Council Bill 12081. And I'm not sure if it has been posted on the agenda.

I don't believe it has.

So Allie, could you start off by walking us through it and then Council Member Peterson, would you speak to it?

Happy to chair stress.

I shared the amendment on the screen.

I just want to make sure that it is viewable zoomed in enough for, for everyone.

So this, this amendment would add a new section to council bill 1, 2, 0, 0, 8, 1, requesting a report from the office of housing in coordination with the Seattle department of construction and inspections on the implementation of these new requirements.

So essentially it would provide information to the council on the types of projects that are being built, under these new provisions, the ownership structure, how much of the bonus provisions they are taking advantage of in the implementation and could inform whether or not the council feels that additional adjustments are needed.

uh, to this legislation.

I'll note that the council member Peterson crafted an amendment to try to reduce the administrative burden on the Office of Housing.

So the reporting, um, cadence matches other annual reporting that the Office of Housing already provides and publishes annually in March every year.

And so this could be incorporated into those existing reports.

And also it would sunset Um, after the fifth year of reporting, which could be extended at the, at the council's, um, discretion, but would, um, go away at some point if, uh, the council determined that monitoring is no longer necessary.

And with that, I'll turn it over to the sponsor.

Thank you.

Council member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And thank you, Ali Panucci, for going through that.

That was well said.

And yes, colleagues, this will enable us, as the chair said at the beginning, to see how the ordinance is going and then whether we need to refine it based on the data.

So I would appreciate your support for this amendment to track the new ordinance and how it's performing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson, and I will be supporting this amendment as I believe that this data will help us identify what we need to know to make sure that this policy is working effectively and to consider the changes that you have put forward in Amendments 1 through 3. Colleagues, any comments, questions?

I'm seeing thumbs up.

Councilmember Peterson, would you like final word and to move the amendment?

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I'd like to move Amendment 4 as circulated to committee this morning via email and presented on the screen today at our remote meeting.

Thank you.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 12081 as shown in Amendment 4. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

And Council Member Peterson, the motion carries.

Got one of four today.

Thank you for your, and Council Member Peterson, really, I do appreciate all the conversation that we've had this week and the spirit in which you brought these amendments.

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

It's always a pleasure to work with you.

Is there any further discussion on the underlying bill as amended?

Council Member Peterson, take it away.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you for the discussion today.

I think it's really healthy to have this type of discussion.

So I appreciate the time and grace to have it.

And also, just for the viewing public, this bill was on the agenda discussed for almost a month or more than a month.

So I feel comfortable moving it forward.

I am going to abstain because I need to think about the bill that is coming out of committee, like what I'll be doing, a full council, I don't know.

So I just need time to think about it because my substantive amendments did not advance on affordability.

So I want to, so I'll just explaining my forthcoming abstention, but I appreciate the discussion and getting that fourth amendment through.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

We always appreciate the abstention rather than the opposition as it creates an undivided report moving out of the committee.

Vice Chair, Council Member Lewis, any thoughts?

Thumbs up, seeing none.

At this time, I will move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 12081 as amended.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill as amended.

If there are no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll?

Member Pearson.

Abstain.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Three in favor, one abstention.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and Council Bill 12081 will be back before the full City Council on Monday, June 28, for a final vote.

Thank you to everyone who called in.

Thank you, Ketel, Allie, for standing in for Ketel, everyone at the Office of Housing, and everyone working to create more affordable housing in the City of Seattle.

Moving on to our next agenda item.

Our next item of business today is a briefing discussion and vote on the landmark ordinance for the Bordeaux House.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item 2, Constable 150106, an ordinance relating to historic preservation, imposing controls upon the Bordeaux House, a landmark designated by the Landmarks Preservation Board.

Thank you.

And we are joined by Aaron Doherty of the Department of Neighborhoods, Lish Whitson of the Council Central staff.

And we're also seeing that Councilmember Lewis needs to be excused, as he let us know before the committee hearing.

So thank you, Councilmember Lewis, you are excused.

So for this agenda item, hearing from Erin Doherty, as mentioned, Ms. Whitson and Katie and Scott Rentschler, the owners of the Bordeaux House.

Erin, would you like to take us away on the presentation and include Katie and Scott as appropriate?

Yes, thank you.

So I think Katie and Scott are on the phone with us.

And they're here joining us today and happy to answer questions if there are any.

And I just want to confirm, are you able to see the slide presentation?

Yes, we are.

And we see Scott is called in as well.

OK, great.

I think both Scott and Katie are on the line.

Yeah, good morning.

Great.

So this ordinance is to codify the controls and incentives agreement that was signed by the property owners and the city historic preservation officer.

The landmark nomination was submitted by the owners.

So just as a brief reminder, you've seen the designation standards in the past for other landmarks.

There are six of them, A, B, C, D, E, and F.

And the board needs to choose at least one of the standards in addition to determining that the property possesses the integrity or ability to convey its significance.

So today we're looking at the Bordeaux House at 806 14th Avenue East.

This was designated by the Landmarks Preservation Board on January 6th, 2021. And they selected standards D and E.

So they recognized it for its distinct architectural style and as an outstanding work of a designer or builder.

The designated features selected by the board include the site, the exterior of the house, and a portion of the interior, which includes the main entry and the grand stair that connects the first and second floors.

The Bordeaux house is of the eclectic Tudor Revival style, incorporating some Queen Anne style elements, like the prominent corner turret with a bell-shaped roof.

The house was designed by William Kimball, built in 1903 for a cost of $15,000.

The house was extensively remodeled and two additions made at the rear of the house only 10 years later.

This project was undertaken by the same owners of the house and designed by the firm of Bebb and Mendel at great expense, nearly half of the original construction cost.

Although a number of early alterations were made to the house exterior, the overall character An outward appearance of the house looks very similar to the original, as you can see in the two photographs.

Architect William Kimball practiced in the Midwest before coming to Seattle in 1901, and prior to the Bordeaux house, he designed a home for influential real estate investor James Moore, which is located across the street from the subject property and is also a local landmark.

This neighborhood is part of an affluent residential enclave platted and developed by Mr. Moore directly south of Volunteer Park.

The firm of Beb and Mendel were likely engaged for the proposed alterations to the house as Mr. Kimball died in 1907. They are responsible for the design of other landmarks in Seattle, including the Hoge building downtown, the First Church of Christ Scientists in Capitol Hill, and the old fire station number 18 in Ballard.

That is it.

Thank you, Aaron.

The old fire station in Ballard, when Ballard had its own fire department, has its own city.

Scott and Katie, I want to thank you for bringing this forward, bringing this to us.

Aaron was able to walk me through the packet in which you submitted, showing the pictures of the interior with the oak inlays and the staircase and entry room in which you are hoping to also have controls and incentives put in place on.

It is incredibly gorgeous.

Would you like to talk about why you've brought this forward, the importance that you see in preserving the historic nature of your home, and anything else that you'd like to add?

Sure.

Well, thank you so much, Chair Strauss and the whole committee and the Seattle City Council and the Landmarks Preservation Board as well for considering uh...

this nomination uh...

uh...

we consider ourselves stewards of the house uh...

and uh...

we've had the opportunity uh...

to uh...

interact with communicate with uh...

members of uh...

that the prior five families that occupied the house uh...

all five of them including the family of uh...

that's descendants of thomas bordeaux who was a french canadian uh...

immigrant who uh...

made his fortune in Seattle in the timber business.

And we see preserving homes like this as a way of preserving stories about Seattle.

And part of the joy we took in this project was getting to know the stories of each of the five families that had occupied the house before we did.

We see ourselves as stewards who are just passing through.

and leaving a legacy for other families who come after us in the future.

So thank you for your consideration and your time today.

Thank you, Scott.

And thank you for your perspective of being stewards of the space in which you occupy.

I really appreciate that.

I wish and hope for more to emulate you in that way.

Colleagues, do we have any questions for, or Lish, do you have any further thoughts?

No, thank you.

Thank you, Lish.

Colleagues, any questions for Aaron, Lish, or Scott and Katie?

I am seeing none.

Scott and Katie, your packet that you put together was incredible.

So I think that has answered many of the questions before us.

And so with that, just double checking, Scott, do you have anything else to add at this time or Aaron?

We're grateful for all the support we received.

We had a lot of professional help with the application and appreciate Aaron's support as well and your consideration.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And seeing as there is no further discussion, we can now vote on this landmark ordinance.

I move the committee recommend passage of council bill 120106. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

If there are no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll?

Yes.

Aye.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

And thank you, Scott and Katie for bringing this forward.

Thank you, Aaron and Lish for being with us today.

This will be back before the full city council on Monday, June 28.

Thank you all for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And our final agenda item today is a briefing report on quarterly permitting reports, something that I'm very interested in.

Mr. Ang, will you please read the item into the record?

Agenda item 3, Seattle Department of Construction and Infection quarterly permitting report.

Thank you.

As you may recall, in the 2021 budget, I added a statement of legislative intent requesting that SDCI report to the committee on a quarterly basis of their permit review times and progress towards speeding up these review permitting decisions.

This is SDCI's second quarterly report to the committee, and we are joined by Director Nathan Torgelson, Darlene Edwards, the Land Use Division Director, and Andy Higgins, the Engineering Service Director, all from SDCI.

Would you all like to begin and walk us through this presentation?

Great, I'll begin again.

Nathan Torkelson, director of SDCI.

Good morning council members.

I'm just going forward to the next slide.

Again, SDCI's purpose is to help people build a safe, livable, and inclusive Seattle.

And our values are equity, we lead with race, and we very seriously look at permitting through the race and social justice lens.

And our other values are respect, quality, integrity, and service.

So just a reminder to the viewing public, a lot of you think of us as issuing permits and administering the design review program, but we're also very involved with code development, with code enforcement.

This includes tenant protections, the rental registration inspection ordinance program, and our vacant building monitoring program.

And we're involved almost every day in community engagement.

So just a refresher on our permit processes, a lot of applicants will go through a master use permit process and a construction permit process.

If someone is subject to a master use permit process, this is typically a design review.

or some kind of a land use approval process, such as a variance, you would first apply for a master use permit.

There's a pre-application, an intake appointment, reviews, a decision, potentially an appeal to the hearing examiner, and then issuance.

and it's really the applicant's call on when they apply for a construction permit.

In a very hot market, oftentimes the construction permit will come in shortly after the master use permit, but the applicants can certainly wait until that master use permit is issued before they submit for a construction permit.

But again, the two often occur concurrently.

So once a permit comes in, there are multiple review locations within SDCI.

As you can see on the slide, there are numerous places where a permit will be routed.

And again, it depends on the type of project and the complexity of the project.

Permits are also routed to other city departments as appropriate, and this can include SDOT.

It might include Finance and Administrative Services if there are American Disability Act issues, Fire Department, Seattle Public Utilities, City Light, the Office of Housing, the Department of Neighborhoods.

And if a project is adjacent to a city park, it will also be routed to our Parks Department.

Thank you.

And Director Torkelson, I think I mentioned this in our pre-briefing meeting, pre-meeting briefing, that the next report, it would be great to have these other departments join us to understand what the staffing levels are of each of, and maybe if we could go back to slide six, just as we're speaking about this.

It is important, as I learned in the last permitting report, that some of these divisions within the departments have four members of their team.

Some have 20 members of their team.

And if a team only has four members and one retires, leaves the office, or that position is vacant, it can create a backlog more significant than for a team that is of 20 people, which is why it is important and I would like to invite these other departments to our next permitting report meeting so that we can have a good understanding of which of these divisions and teams need additional staff so that we can ensure that we are able to move permit processes through to approval as quickly as possible and that these unintended backlogs aren't created by issues that we can resolve.

Great.

Thank you.

Very much appreciated.

Um, so this is this slide basically discusses a project that's underway to revise the way that we currently communicate necessary corrections to permit applications.

Currently, we write correction letters within a tool that we call focus plan review.

Unfortunately, that tool is built on an old technology and really is getting to end of life.

And there's an opportunity to move into this new tool called Bluebeam, which will allow us to actually mark up plans that are submitted within the tool and then have those markups be hyperlinked to correction items that are generated in a correction letter, similar to the way we do it today, but with the added functionality that you can either look at the plan itself and go to the correction item in the correction letter or you can go backwards, vice versa with the hyperlinks.

What our hope is with this is actually to be able to make it more efficient for plan reviewers to communicate with applicants clearly where on the plan sets needed corrections are required and that they could respond in kind to each of those corrections asked for.

and be able to do that in a more efficient way, hopefully to reduce the cycling of corrections, the number of times that a correction letter needs to be written over and over again because of lack of response to outstanding correction items.

So this project is currently underway.

The goal is to reduce correction cycles.

We've already rolled out licenses to a number of our planner viewers, so they're using the tool as a viewer, as opposed to, say, Adobe Pro, where you could also view those PDFs that are submitted.

as part of applications, and we're fully integrating it with our Excel implementation so that when correction letters are written and review locations are completed with their reviews, that those letters and those documents will upload into our electronic document management system automatically and notify the applicant right away as soon as they're available.

We have partnered with other jurisdictions around the state.

A lot of them, mybuildingpermit.com jurisdictions use Bluebeam.

A number of our staff that we've acquired over the course of the last few years have worked in those other jurisdictions and have a lot of experience with it already.

And so we're utilizing, tapping into that expertise to move this ball forward.

And hopefully we'll have this ready to go fully in mid-September.

Vice Chair Mosqueda.

And I'm also noticing that on Seattle Channel, previously, our faces were included next to the slides as we were presenting.

I'm not seeing that occurring today.

So when you do speak, maybe just announce your name so that I know.

I know the difference between Director Torgalson and Andy's voices, but the viewing public might not.

Sorry, that was Andy Higgins.

No problem.

Vice Chair, take it away.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I'm wondering if that's a matter of how the Seattle Channel view slide instead of a side-by-side speaker format.

I wonder if that button has inadvertently not been hit.

Just hovering that for technical feedback.

So I wanted to just check in here on these first few slides.

I mean, I guess my biggest question is what have we been doing on the macro level to set better targets.

The two slides prior didn't have any timelines associated with those, with that flowchart.

And so I'd like to know what review targets specifically we're trying to hit to make sure that permits that are issued by SDCI are being addressed as quickly as possible.

How did the department arrive at these targets that you were trying to hit?

And is there a need to revise these targets given the previous slide, previous presentation that we saw was such a decreased number of permits being issued and, quite frankly, the concern about revenue being lost with that delayed timeline and also the impact on small businesses and organizations.

I've been contacted by a business in Lower Queen Anne, Inner Bay Area, who was basically told that it would take six months to get his business reopened post-pandemic and that just seems like it's going to be a nail in the coffin.

if he's not able to get more assistance in a faster way, especially in a post-pandemic reopening world.

If we're telling folks it's time to come back, open your business, and then it's gonna take him six months, he's really worried about staying afloat.

So do we have any types of targets that we can note in the post-COVID world and any data on the types of businesses submitting applications for permits and what portion of those applications are small businesses or housing?

I guess, I mean, and just an overall general update since the last time you've been here, because it looks like Bluebeam is sort of the main thing that you're reporting out that's different from the last time.

Are there any other ideas besides the Bluebeam effort to report progress from that first quarterly report?

Council Member Mosqueda, really appreciate your questions.

We have several additional slides that do address some of the issues you're raising.

We're happy to entertain those questions now, or we can continue with the presentation and answer those questions at the end, whatever's your preference.

Mr. Chair.

Let's see if, because I know that those questions are addressed in some of the upcoming slides when we get to that.

Because Vice Chair Mosqueda, your question is spot on.

What are the targets?

Do they need to be revised?

And how do we speed up the process?

Those are the three points that I would like to really have a fine-tuned answer to before we move into the budget process this coming fall.

That sounds good.

Mr. Chair, I have reviewed the slides.

I'm aware of the full presentation and have taken a look at all of the slides there.

Mr. Torrelson, I just want to make sure that that is clear.

I do also have questions, Mr. Torrelson, for the following slides.

So I appreciate the direction, Mr. Chair.

I'm happy to wait for your advice, but just want to make sure that folks know that there are specific questions on the upcoming slides that I'll be directing to the department as well.

Great.

So some of the key permitting takeaways, we are meeting many of our permitting goals, but as Council Member Mosqueda pointed out, other goals we are not meeting.

Some of those are due to staffing shortages and key review locations, and some are due to other reasons that we'll hit upon later.

STCI experienced a huge, significant vesting rush in the first quarter of this year.

If you recall, the city adopted new technical code legislation that went into effect March 15th.

This is new building code regulations, mechanical code, and probably the most significant with the new energy code regulations.

So we had a huge rush of building permits that came in before that effective date of March 15th.

So we are extremely busy reviewing and processing those.

building permits.

so what we're seeing now is much lower permitting volumes and valuations, but sort of looking at a forecast for the months ahead, we do expect those permit volumes to pick back up again.

Most trade permit types have returned to pre-pandemic issuance volumes, and by trade permits, I mean things like boilers, refrigeration, electrical, mechanical, elevator.

Some of those are one-time permits associated with construction, and some of those permits are annuals.

For example, we inspect elevators on an annual basis.

Despite, you know, the challenges of last year, STCI's intake to issuance review times and the number of review cycles have remained fairly consistent.

But again, we recognize that we need to improve on that as we go forward and as we get out of the COVID situation.

And Director Torkelson and Andy, if you could address Vice Chair Mosqueda's questions at this slide, that would be great.

Sure, this is Andy Higgins.

This slide is talking about the work that we've done over the past decade to continuously improve our processes and to try to reduce our handling of the permit applications and the time that it spends in SDCI or the city's hands.

You can see over the course of time that percentage of time that black line indicates that we have decreased the amount of time that it's in our hands relative to the overall throughput time from intake to issuance due to the fact that when we check out corrections, there is a aspect of that time that we have no control over and it's on the applicant to return responses to those corrections.

You can see that over the decade, as the economy sped up, the overall throughput time did increase.

And I think you're seeing a little plateau and a decrease here on the simple and medium construction permits over the last couple of years.

But on the complex construction permits, it's still on the rise.

A lot of those permits came in, like Director Torgelson said before, because they were vesting to the prior code, and on the date of application is the date that locks in all law in effect.

And a lot of those projects came in at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 to vest.

Our intake was around 6.2 billion last year, and our issuance was only around 2.1.

So there's a huge backlog of permit applications in the system, many of which will stay in the system on applicant's choice because of financing issues or other things relative to the market.

but we'll continue to try to do our part of it as quickly as.

And just to add to that from an STCI revenue standpoint, not all, but a bulk of the permit fees for building permits are collected at application and not issuance.

Vice Chair Mosqueda, do you feel your questions have been answered in this slide?

And then after you make your comments, I have a couple.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I mean, I think that the key takeaway that you ended with, Director Torkelson, is an important one to underscore because it's not, I think, our intent to be consistent with the review times, right?

We want to make sure that we're actually improving and not just stagnating in terms of our review times.

And it's a hard scale to look at here, but there is a slight uptake still in the delayed time.

Obviously fewer permits were being submitted in 2020, but the delayed time is still very concerning.

And so I guess the biggest question that I was trying to get at earlier is, you know, what is different in this quarterly update versus last quarterly update?

And how are we trying to identify new ideas to expedite permits that are in the pipeline given the high cost of materials?

costs of labor, and the need for us to open up very quickly, right?

This feels like unprecedented times, and we've done a lot in the last year to try to make sure that businesses can stay afloat.

And I feel like we need to apply that same sort of mentality with our applications and review timeline here, and be very flexible in how we're helping folks reopen.

So one thing I can, this is Andy Higgins, one thing I can add is that in 2020, because of the hiring freezes that went into effect and the fact that we had term limited positions that were ending at 2020 in the building plans examiner classification, we were unable to add, proactively add for backfills from attrition and retirements during 2020. So we initiated a hiring process at the beginning of 2021 after the 2021 budget was put in place.

that converted all of our building plans examiner positions to regular ongoing funded.

And we just brought on board eight new building plans examiners in the past two weeks.

So we understand, you know, we predicted six months ago that we would be behind due to the vesting rush and due to the fact that we were having challenges staffing because of those constraints.

But now we have put that in place.

We anticipate that things are going to pick up significantly in the next three to six months as they get trained up and on board, as well as we've put in place some opportunities for facilitating and expediting small business applications.

And Director Torkelson, you may want to talk more about that aspect.

Happy to do that.

Should I go ahead and do that now or?

Sure, and then I'll ask my questions afterwards.

I want to make sure that Vice Chair Mosqueda's questions are fully answered, and then I'll have some thoughts to share.

Sure.

So STCI will be in the process of hiring a permit liaison, which will focus on the vacant storefront spaces downtown.

It will also focus on small businesses throughout the city.

Before the pandemic, the mayor put up a small business task force, and also look at our arts and cultural businesses, which have really suffered during the pandemic.

This will be a central point of contact within our department that will help facilitate the permit review for those special types of permits.

So that's one immediate improvement that we're in the process of making.

So someone really to handhold that applicant and to help them understand what the permit requirements are.

The last thing we want to do is to have a small business owner come in and sign that lease and then discover what the actual requirements are.

Thank you.

And Mr. Chair, thank you again for offering additional time here.

Andy, I appreciate the note about the hiring freeze last year.

I think that's why the council worked so hard to pass Jump Start.

to make sure that we weren't actually engaging in austerity budgeting, which I assume is part of the reason that you see an uptick in the post-recession time when the recession really hit Washington state in 2010. and 11. So I appreciate that.

It's also been, you know, six, seven months since the council did pass this 2021 budget.

I appreciate that the hiring and hiring that you have done has taken place.

But Director Torgelson, I'm still concerned that I'm not hearing like specific targets in terms of how fast we can get folks through the process.

I appreciate the hand-holding liaison.

personnel, but I think what I'm asking is, you know, if the experience of the small businesses that I'm hearing is a six-month process, if the data continues to show the average number of days within SDCI being relatively high right now, do we have specific targets where we're going to say, look, in this post-pandemic world, as we are reopening in the next 12 months or the next six months, our commitment is going to be that we get people through the process in two months or you know, a certain amount of days that actually is reasonable for the small business because six months is just not.

And so I'm not hearing a specific timeline that you are responding to the need for flexibility.

And vice chair, I'll just jump in here to kind of share what my next steps, because this is a real, this slide really illustrates the need for us to reassess our goals for having permits out the door.

I believe in director Torkelson, correct me if I'm wrong, The current benchmark is 120 days, which I believe to be too long.

And for us to readjust that goal means that we need to come together around a table and everyone participate in changing that goal.

So between now and the next permitting report that we will receive, Mr. Ahn in my office and I will be coordinating and would love to include you as a partner, Vice Chair, to have roundtable discussions and then a lunch and learn to present more information about permitting goals and turnaround times.

The reason that I would like to have these, this series of meetings between now and the next permitting report is because as I stated, I believe it was slide six with all of the different nodes, we need to ensure that the correct staffing is available in each, on each team to ensure that there's not a roving backlog within each of those nodes.

I guess, Director Torkelson, would you like to address goal setting and changing of the goal?

We very much look forward to that roundtable, Council Member Strauss, and getting different permit applicants at the table to discuss if we need to change those permit turnaround times and goals.

And this is Andy Higgins.

I would just add also that we do have current goals for initial plan review for the simple and medium projects.

It's 95% completion within two to four weeks.

And for the complex projects, it's 95% completion within eight to 12 weeks.

But those were set a very long time ago when that 120 day clock was set.

And so those are the goals we've been striving for.

We right now are not meeting those goals.

So the first intent of ours is to get back into a paradigm where we can be meeting those goals and the staffing influx is going to help that significantly.

But you're right.

If if the goals are to be, you know, significantly increased, then it's really a capacity question.

And I'm happy to engage in that conversation.

And so now we get into some of my detailed questions on this slide.

Thank you, Andy.

That was a helpful explanation.

So when I'm looking at this slide, I see average of days within SDCI in blue and average of days elsewhere in orange with the percentage of time in SDCI as the black line.

Can you help me understand who is holding the permit when it is average days elsewhere?

Is that other city departments or is that the permit holder themselves?

It would be the permit holder themselves.

What we do is we use stop clock time similar to chess match where we start the clock at the application date and when all required reviews are completed, we stop the clock and we check it out to the applicant and then when the applicant responds and uploads their correction responses.

We start the clock again.

We send it back to all the required review locations that did not approve their initial plan reviews and had outstanding corrections.

We go through that process, stop the clock again when they're all complete, and check it back out to the applicant for another round.

And that goes on and on until the applicant fully responds and all review locations are able to approve their plan sets.

And then we, at ready to issue, we notify the applicant that the permit is ready to issue, and we stop the clock again.

And then whenever they pay for it and pull whenever they pay for it, they automatically can pull the permit now in our current system.

So really, it's a matter of all city departments and ownership of it in the city's hands versus when we check it out to an applicant for responses and being in their hands.

Great.

I see Darlene came off mute.

Darlene, would you like to add anything?

I was kind of waiting for the next slide, which is very similar to this one.

I don't know if you want to move on to the next one.

Well, let me, I've got a couple more thoughts on this slide, which is very similar to the next one.

And then please jump in there.

So Andy, I guess the question here is where in this chart is it highlighted days in other departments?

Is that just included here in the blue of average days within SDCI?

It is included in the blue.

Yes, it's all city department.

So the blue is really all city departments and the orange is applicants.

Correct.

So to your point, that that is an indicator that we only have control over what we have control over.

And if another city department ends up being understaffed and becomes the bottleneck review location, then that city department ends up being the department that controls the total throughput time for that cycle.

So we only have the ability to deal with the STCI particulars, and don't really have that authority to tell other departments what to do.

Great.

And at this time, I just, again, have to raise up the leadership of Vice Chair and Council Member Mosqueda, because if it were not for the jumpstart policy, we would be in a world of hurt in this space.

The black line with the peak just after 2008 identifies that when In the last recession, rather than passing progressive revenue, we decided to lay off city staff.

And what that did was, especially within the permit world, these are highly specific and trained individuals for their roles.

And so to rehire for those positions created a backlog which increased and created even some of the delays that I believe we're experiencing today.

And so here we are, 13 years after the last recession, still experiencing some of the delays that were caused by laying off staff rather than retaining staff through a recession.

So not, you know, yesterday, the mayor signed the Seattle Rescue Plan that Council Budget Chair Mosqueda and Council President Champion threw.

we would not, highlighting what I said yesterday, we would not be able to be giving money to the community and to small businesses and childcare providers if we were paying off backfill in our own city budget.

And so again, cheers to you Council Member Mosqueda for making sure that we didn't repeat 2008. And again,

Three years ago, thank you, thank you to the council for passing STCI's revised fee ordinance.

So when we do have that next recession, we will not have to lay off nearly as large a percentage of staff as we did back during the last recession, which will help us tremendously.

Vice Chairman Mosqueda.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I know there's other slides to get through.

Mr. Chair, thanks for the concept of pulling together folks to look at how we can expedite the timelines.

I think one thing that would be really helpful in this post-recession, post, I was going to say post-pandemic, we're not through it yet.

So in the wake of the last year, We should be looking at what other cities might be doing to expedite permits as well.

I know that some places like Austin had some innovative ideas we were looking at a few years ago on how to basically expedite certain types of permits, especially for projects that included housing, which we're in dire need of right now, and certain projects that included high labor standards and high percentages of unionized labor, for example, on large projects.

Having a pay-for system that allows for folks to help address the resource issue is what other cities have looked at.

So I'd be interested in getting feedback on what those other cities have done, and if we need to be doing that now, obviously.

I don't want that to delay the conversation.

Let's not have paralysis by analysis.

Let's actually just figure out what we need to do to expedite these processes to get the construction underway so that we can rebound.

And we know often with the MUP timeline, the figures don't include the early design guidance phase because that occurs before and prior to the MUP application.

So do you have any ideas to focus on a design review, which accounts for a huge a huge piece of the entitlement process and any other takeaways to make sure that we are not just sort of striving for stagnation in our review timeline, but actually expediting the process across the board, recognizing you can't control the average number of days elsewhere.

Just focusing on the average number of days within SDCI, I think, is the intent of the conversation.

That's exactly spot on Vice Chair Mosqueda.

And actually some research that Ketel Freeman from central staff has already done, especially on the Austin permitting process.

And we are benefited with Ketel Freeman has worked in Austin as well.

And so I think that those conversations absolutely should be held in tandem.

Should we move on to slide 11 since Vice Chair has started discussing MUPS and early design guidance?

And Director Torgalson, Andy, Darlene, if you'd also like to address the early design guidance and design review questions.

Thank you.

Hi, so good morning.

It's Darlene Edwards.

So this slide is pretty much, it's the land use version of the slide previous that Andy talked about.

And as far as like the trends with, you know, seeing the lines and the amount of times with the department and the applicant.

Same thing stands, everything that Andy had mentioned, I believe, pertains to master use permits as well.

I will note on here, and then you'll notice on the future slides for master use permits, the way that we've divvied up the types of projects.

The complex projects are the design review projects, the SEPA projects, and the council actions, like council conditional uses or rezones, and then pretty much the simple and medium projects are everything else.

I think as far as Council Member Muscato, your comment about design review and the EDG process being prior to the actual application process, I know my managers who manage the sections that do the land use reviews and the design reviews, we know that that reducing permit times is one of our goals coming up and they recognize that and we're already sitting down and trying to talk about you know what can we do for design review and firm ups.

Firm ups it's a little different from construction in that there's processes that we can't alter like the public notice time and the appeal time that sort of thing but whatever we do have control over which would be the actual review times, and maybe even when meetings get scheduled, that sort of thing.

We're committed to sitting down and looking at where, if any, we can reduce anything.

One of the challenges that we, frankly, have had with design review that's not as much of a challenge today is that we have, what, seven design review boards?

And we had so many projects going through design review, and the boards are meeting so many times a month.

that the amount of time they had to review the projects, projects would get shifted, you know, into the months ahead.

Whereas now, I believe with almost all of our design review boards, projects are able to go to the board when they're ready pretty much immediately, just because there are fewer projects.

So in some ways, that's not good news if there were fewer MUPS coming in, but those projects are able to get to the boards much faster.

So that's another issue that we have to look at.

I think we also just have to take a look at the thresholds.

Do we need to change the design review thresholds and what projects are subject to design review?

Vice Chair, does that answer your questions?

Well, I have all sorts of questions about how we can bypass some of the process and create pathways, especially just, you know, given the emergency declarations that have been put out that have allowed for us to do that in many other areas.

And perhaps, Mr. Chair, that's something that you've been considering as well, or Director Torrelson, but especially when we think about the permitting process that's going to allow for additional housing, is there a shorter timeline for the, the notice and is there a shorter timeline or could we just bypass some of the design review requirements given the urgency of restarting our economy and more importantly, housing folks?

Right now, during the COVID emergency, affordable housing projects are not going through design review.

I just mean like housing as well.

Housing in general, yeah.

More to come, I suppose.

But obviously, a big concern.

We did a little bit of work, as you noted, to shorten some of those timelines in other areas previous years.

But maybe that also needs to be reviewed.

Yes.

I will say yes to that.

And thank you, Vice Chair.

So this is Andy Higgins again.

This chart is basically showing a year and a half or so of history and what days from permit application to issuance timelines have been, and it is showing that even through the March and post work from home world indicated that this is really stayed relatively flat.

What we've done, even with our initial plan review timelines increasing as we brought on these new staff, we've actually had them taking on correction cycle reviews, so we're not relying on them to do the entire initial review, but they're learning by taking on the correction reviews that someone else has done and then working with that reviewer to make sure that all the issues have been ironed out.

So we're ramping people up to speed, This is basically saying that the time in our hands has been relatively flat and you know the time in the applicants hands in some cases has been increasing because a lot of those projects have been marinating, especially the larger projects that have funding issues and things like that.

So you're right, there's other issues that are outside of our control from a lending perspective that are causing other projects to sit in the system and not want to get issued because once they get issued, they've got an 18 month window.

that the permit is good, and if they don't start the work within that window, they're subject to compliance with the current code in effect at the time they renew.

So there are other factors that go into that, but relatively over the last year, things have been fairly consistent.

Again, same thing with correction cycles necessary.

The top chart indicates on the right for simple and medium projects that it takes roughly three or so correction cycles to get through on average to permit issuance.

And for complex, it's closer to four.

With Bluebeam implementation, the goal is to try to reduce that so that there's better clarity, better collaboration on solutions and ability to reduce correction cycles.

We feel like the combination of reducing our initial plan review And being able to meet our current targets in the first place, as well as being able to reduce the number of correction cycles needed, will accomplish exactly what you're trying to accomplish in terms of total throughput time to issuance.

One other note, sorry to interrupt.

One other note, there was a comment on the previous couple of slides about pay for expediting.

We did run a racial equity toolkit against that about 15 years ago and decided that it was really not equitable to allow people that did have the resources to pay for expediting.

to allow them to get through the system faster than those that didn't have the ability to pay for expediting.

So we've made a policy choice over many, many years to not allow that for that exact reason.

We have had agreements with parties outside the city to add additional funding for staffing.

And I think that that has helped improve the throughput of the entire system, which I believe is a more equitable solution.

And I believe Council Member Strauss, that's what your intent may be, increase our capacity overall and our depth of capacity to deal with those constraints that arise from time to time and caused the bottlenecks to shift from one review location to another so that all review locations are able to review efficiently and effectively and keep our throughput flow going smoothly.

Yes, Vice Chair, please keep going and then I've got some questions once you're done.

Thank you, Andy.

Thanks for the history on that.

From 15 years ago, I didn't know we were using racial equity toolkits back then.

So thank you.

I think that the question that I would still have is like, are there other cities that are using some sort of pay for a model with a racial equity lens, with a social justice lens?

So if a project is going towards building housing or if a project uses a high number of good living wage jobs, if it's creating or if it's using like green building standards or something along those lines that actually get at the underlying racial and social justice issues that we're all trying to address within the city.

Obviously 15 years ago we didn't have the 20% increase in you know a decade span in our population.

We weren't in a declared state of emergency on housing and homelessness.

So Maybe there are some things that are happening now post-COVID that can still help us expedite.

And I also don't think that just a simple pay-for model is equitable.

But if there's things that we could do to help bring in additional staff or expedite certain types of projects, that might be really helpful as long as it wasn't increasing the weight for other projects currently as well.

I look forward to working with you on that, but I appreciate the background and also want to think about if there's a way that we can look at the type of projects, especially given the urgency right now with COVID and small businesses needing to open, et cetera.

We could also share our prioritization guideline that we have in place.

We do already prioritize affordable housing projects and school projects and shelter projects and things like that that do get different levels of prioritization.

That would be helpful.

And do you have that broken down by the amount of time, like by projects that have housing, projects that are for small businesses?

Could we see that type of delineation?

Yes, we could.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And then my questions here, I guess this slide with the master use permits and simple medium, both slides work well from the question that I have here.

Just to understand, when we were speaking earlier about goals and you were noting that for, I believe, simple and medium permits, the goal for turnaround is two to four weeks, and then for complex that it is 8 or 12 weeks is that it's well correct.

I am still not even using my notes, Teach.

Good job.

And so I think what's important to note here and part of the conversation about reassessing goals is that those goals are just for what are oftentimes the first correction cycle.

And then for the overall goal of having that permit process, the 120 days is to include all correction cycles.

I think that that is something that can be confusing and needs to be addressed.

What I did hear you say, and let me make sure that I heard it correctly, is that with the Bluebeam software that is just now being implemented, you're able to make real-time, you're able to give real-time feedback rather than waiting for correction cycles.

Is that the case, and do you think that will reduce the correction cycles?

It has the capability to do that.

Yes, that is not part of our initial implementation because it really would only be applicable for a small set of projects where it would add value.

If we tried to do a pre-resubmittal conference on every application, that would really bog down a lot of the system.

And so where there's really complex issues or larger projects or projects that needed a little more hand-holding to get through some of the challenging issues that they have faced, we do have the opportunity to potentially do that as part of the Bluebeam Studio package.

But initially, what we're trying to do is really replicate or replace what we have in our focus plan review tool and enhance our ability to collaborate towards solutions within that single tool and allow us to try to reduce correction cycles via that initially.

Okay, great.

Just want to make sure And what strategies, and maybe this is better for the roundtable conversation, but do you off the top of your head have more strategies that you believe we can implement to reduce these correction cycles?

I think our biggest one is trying to be as clear as possible on what are the required corrections and how to comply with the code.

I mean, at the end of the day, our job is to point out areas where the application isn't in compliance or substantial compliance with the code, and it's incumbent upon the applicant to substantially comply with the code.

And if we can get to substantial compliance faster, through less cycles, we'll be able to get to issuance faster overall.

So that's the key to me is that the cycling is really problematic and the averages sometimes don't show that in there.

Sometimes we have other charts that show if you do are one to three cycles and you're very responsive to your application corrections, you're going to get through the permit process in a much shorter period of time, where if it takes you four to five cycles, it might double that timeline, or six cycles, it might triple that timeline.

So the average is one way to look at it.

There's a large number of our projects that do go through in one to three cycles and get issued much more quickly versus the ones that take four to five to six cycles or more who are either I don't know how to explain why it takes that sometimes.

Sometimes it's challenging issues.

Sometimes it's a lack of responsiveness from the applicants.

Sometimes it's just a challenge to the question being asked.

And so, you know, that's where we want to focus on finding solutions and getting through those faster and getting to issuance more quickly.

Thank you.

Those are all my questions for this slide.

So this slide is really indicative of that initial plan review target timeline.

This shows from a timeline of about the beginning of 2019 after we went live with Xcella, the variability and our ability to meet our initial plan review timeline targets at that 95% level.

You can see that as we got into 2020 in the middle of this chart through about July 2020, We actually were able to get up there and achieve those targets fairly consistently.

We didn't really have our reporting in place until about the middle of 2019. So you can see from the middle of 2019 to the middle of 2020, having that reporting in place and being able to have the staffing in place to get those reviews completed, we were actually able to get up there.

As the middle of 2020 hit and we started to feel those attrition from retirements and we were not able to backfill those term limited positions because who's going to take a six month term limited in a pandemic as a job?

You know that has really dropped off to today.

And I think, you know, we have gotten ahead of that.

We're bringing on eight new ordinance and structural reviewers, building plans examiners.

We've already got them on board and in place, training them up.

Starting today, we've actually got two new geotechnical engineers that are starting.

So that's going to add capacity in that potential bottleneck location.

And we're also recruiting for two additional and a third position that we lost through attrition in the drainage review area.

So this is, I feel like, possibly the worst point.

Unfortunately, reporting out today doesn't feel good to say that.

But I will say that going forward, it does look better in terms of as we bring on that additional capacity in the current bottleneck review locations, that that will be will be in a better state three to six months from now.

And this is Nathan Torgelson.

The fire department just brought on a new plans reviewer as well, which should help significantly in that area.

Thank you.

You addressed on that last slide, you addressed many of the aspects that to my question of what have created the situations for us not meeting our goals.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

It sounds like staffing and technology have been the main drivers.

Is there anything

I think ultimately it's a capacity question at this point and making sure that all the review locations have enough capacity to deal with the demands that are placed on them currently.

The vesting rush is another one of those things where I think we're getting towards the tail end of working through those applications that came in in March.

And as the number of applications has softened since that time, I believe we'll also be catching up just due to the fact that demand is going down and capacity is going up.

So when that happens, I believe we're going to get closer and closer to our target group times much more quickly.

And did I also hear you state that the time review or the term limited positions that you previously had have been converted to permanent positions?

Yes, thankfully you all approved the budget for 2021 where we asked to have that all converted from term limited positions to regular ongoing funded positions for building plans examiners.

We, I believe, had five or six pockets with banded and a supervisor pocket that were all term limited ending at the end of 2020. And we had had those for a number of years that we initially requested through contingent budget authority back in 2016 ish, I think.

And so, you know, it's it's really difficult to recruit with a term limited tag on it when you put that recruitment out there, because people look at that like a temp job.

And so it's difficult to recruit for those.

And so the better the more able we are to get regularly funded positions, knowing that nothing is permanent, layoffs can happen if revenue goes through the floor and everybody's aware of that, but just having that tag of term limit on there makes it very, very difficult for recruitments.

And so having it be not on there and being able to go forward, we were able to bring on a really strong group of folks this last few months.

aspect of Budget Chair Mosqueda's leadership.

Hoping you out already.

I guess, and maybe we can talk about this at the roundtable, but just for the viewing public, what do you believe needs to happen for us to change the goals?

And so whether that's the 120-day goal or the four and 12-week goals.

Sure, I think that's really a question of what looks good, what does good look like, and defining that from an applicant's perspective and from your perspective and saying, what makes sense?

And then being able to have enough capacity to meet those goals and meet them in every review location.

Because when we bring in an application, it's got to get through every single review location before it gets checked out to the applicant.

And so any particular review location that ends up becoming that bottleneck ends up becoming the challenge.

So, but at some point, you know, you can only add so much too.

And if there's a diminishing return and a huge risk of overstaffing as well.

So it's trying to find that correct balance of what does good look like and what is it going to take for us to get there consistently?

Thank you.

So I think this just is kind of a reiteration of the number of cycles and what may be causing that complexity of code regulations, lower quality submitted plans because of just everybody being so busy.

New city staff who tend to sort of cover their own butts when they start out initially, write more corrections than necessary because they don't want to miss something.

We train to that.

We try to get past that as quickly as possible and not have that happen.

but it is a reality.

And then, you know, as projects come back in the door, we have shorter target times for re-reviewing those projects than the initial review periods themselves.

So again, we track initial plan review most closely and the timelines around meeting those targets, but it also has an impact on correction cycle reviews as well and how long projects sit in the review cycle queues once they come back in the door for corrections.

Like I said, we try to get those done and out the door faster.

But when a review location becomes a bottleneck, they only have so much capacity.

They also have to deal with all those correction cycles as well.

So it's not only reducing initial plan review, but it's also reducing correction plan review timelines and looking at the whole in order to reduce total throughput.

Thank you.

And I think in the next presentation that we have in September, it will be really helpful for me to understand the difference between other departments and SDCI's role, because as the Department of Construction and Inspections, your whole job is making sure that we get these permits out the door.

And I know that you have a very intense focus on this.

So other departments don't have that same goal in their department.

to issue permits and so I just want to make sure that we're giving them the resources that they need to be successful as well.

So this is Nathan.

Looking to the rest of 2021 and into 2022, obviously our key priority is to make reductions in our permitting times.

We have learned a lot through COVID.

We know that we have been able to work fairly successfully virtually.

One of the things that we want to do is stand up a virtual applicant service center so someone doesn't have to come downtown.

They can get on a screen like this and talk to an SDCI staff person in our Applicant Service Center.

We have looked at the possibility of having in-person services at non-downtown locations if it is really important for a person to have face-to-face contact with someone.

That could perhaps be at a Seattle Public Library branch location.

And again, we want to resume all our standard services.

Our rental registration inspection ordinance inspections have been on pause during COVID, and we know that we will resume those services.

And finally, you know, we talked about the importance of reducing permitting times, but we also continue to work on improving our customer experience.

And part of that comes with technology changes that Andy talked about and are highlighted in a slide that's coming up.

So this slide is showing what the project valuations were in the course of time over 2019, 20, and 21. And you can see spikes in June of 2020, December of 2020, and then January and March of 2021. And each of those really is around what was going to be the code adoption date of the 2018 construction codes.

Initially, it was July 1st.

So we had a number of projects shooting to get in ahead of that in June.

Since they were ready to go, a lot of them just carried forward and kept going with those.

Then the date shifted, I believe, to November.

So in October, we saw a bump.

Then it was some thought around end of year, but then it landed with March 15th.

And that was a little bit different than the state conversation.

So in that whole period of time, we had a number of projects that were going to apply later in 2021, rush in and try to get in ahead of those changes.

So we have seen a number of those bumps in valuation.

But you can also see that the volume has maintained fairly consistently throughout that time.

In March of last year, of course, there was a dip primarily in the smaller projects, the volume of projects that we get that are in the small to medium.

is roughly 80 to 85% of our total volume versus the complex projects is more that 15 to 20%, but they're much higher value projects.

So you can tell right after the pandemic hit and things shut down, a lot of those small projects just hit the brakes and did not proceed right away.

But as things started to open back up in the summer, those volumes came back up and That's fairly consistent even through a recession.

We often note that our valuation of permits drops much more significantly than the volume of permits in the 2008 recession.

Valuation dropped by 50% as did our revenue, which is why we ended up experiencing so many layoffs because we didn't have a a significant enough core staffing reserve in place, which we do now, but the volume of permits remained at about an 80% tick.

So even though the volume stayed high and the valuation and revenue declined significantly, we still had a high volume of permits coming through the system, which is why we need to maintain the staffing levels we need even during downturns so that as we're, you know, we're anticipating economic recovery, we want to be able to have trained staff.

They're fully effective and in place so that we are helping to facilitate that economic recovery rather than being a roadblock to that.

So we definitely appreciate the ability now to have that core staffing in place.

Thank you.

And you actually answered all the questions that I had prepared, just highlighting that the upward ticks are when many permits are trying to come in the door to best perform new code implementation.

And if that does not happen with the appropriate staffing, it creates a wave of delight.

Thank you, Andy.

So this is Darlene again.

So this slide pretty much shows the MUP application intake for the last three years, and it has definitely slowed since last summer, but it's been steady since September of last year till now.

And I think I can just point out that January was probably our lowest month with 38 applications.

And then April this year was our highest month with 60. Oh, this is different from the slide for construction intake.

We don't have valuation information since we don't look at project value at MUP application, so this is just strictly application numbers.

I think something that I mentioned before is that something that is always steady but it doesn't show on here are the we always have a steady amount of unit lot subdivisions come in.

And that's due partly in whenever we issue townhouse permits or row house permits, you know, typically the unit lot subdivision comes in shortly after that.

So that's always one of our steady streams.

I'm just thinking about this, Nathan and Andy, we can probably talk about this later, but I don't know if it'd be more, if this slide would be more helpful or, you know, valuable if it had, if it maybe showed the complex MUPS as opposed to the simple and medium, just so that you can get an idea of the size of projects that are coming in the door.

Because this is really just the application numbers period.

So it's like all the MUPS that come in.

So if you think that'll be valuable, we can have our economist pull that up.

That would be valuable for the next presentation.

We don't need to come back today or in July.

Thank you.

And this is all the trade permits.

Again, this is Nathan, boiler, electrical, sign permits, et cetera.

This is by issuance, and you can see that trade permits have largely returned to pre-pandemic volumes.

So definitely back on track there.

And I know in our pre meeting briefing, I asked the question and you described it a little bit here.

Could you expand a little bit on what are trade permits as compared to building permits?

Sprayed permits, again, are things like boiler, pressure valve permits, electrical permits, sign and awning permits, conveyance permits, which are elevators, which we inspect both new elevators and on an annual basis every year for safety reasons, refrigeration permits, electrical permits, side sewer permits, that type of a permit.

Great, and so this is more the life of a building rather than the building being built?

It's both.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yes, Sam.

Thank you.

So we have three slides left.

So this is Andy Higgins.

I can touch on this one a little bit.

This has to do with our Seattle Services Portal enhancements that went live, I believe, earlier this month.

I want to say the 10th of June.

What happened here was we had an external research company come in and do some user experience research for us, survey our applicants and find out what we could do to better enhance their experience on the public portal and get better information from the portal itself.

And we took all of that feedback and worked with Seattle IT very closely to update the Seattle services portal, my records page, which is the page that you search all of your current applications and the status and to do's and all of those things that are either in the city's hands, or fees needing to be paid, or corrections needing to be responded to, or permits being ready to issue, etc.

So this is just a screenshot of that Seattle Services Portal.

A little hard to see up in the upper left corner, but you can see it says Seattle Services Portal there.

But this is what's known as a heat map.

Many people have never seen this before, but those of you that are familiar with it will note that the brighter the areas, the more clicks there are on those areas.

And you'll notice that on the upper left corner, the homepage and the My Records tabs are the two on the farthest upper left that are kind of a white hot and a red hot color.

And then secondarily, you'll notice along the middle kind of a band that looks almost like a streak of a comet or something like that across the upper third of the, or about the one third point of that slide.

And really what those are, are new filters that we've put in so that when someone enters their name or their address or anything that they are associated with, they can start filtering their projects by that.

So they log into their portal account, all projects that they're associated with will show up in their records list, and then they can filter by status.

So, you know, if something's ready to issue or fees need to be paid, or they just want to look up history, it's all available there.

We've gotten a lot of really great feedback about this, but this is just one example of the ongoing work we're doing to continuously improve that user experience.

One great feedback that we got is we have a very large major downtown property owner and their property manager had over 300 permits that they were tracking for their properties.

And the majority of those were trade permits and street use permits.

And they had to create their own spreadsheet just to track all those different permits.

And now with these Accela enhancements, they just go to one screen.

So it saves them a tremendous amount of time.

So next slide.

Shaping Seattle, as you recall, Shaping Seattle debuted several years ago.

And this is an easy way to get on a map and click on a blue dot and see a project.

A lot of people don't know the project address.

but they can go on a map and locate a project.

We started with just design review projects, and we had to take Shaping CL down for a while while we improved the technology, but it came back to include all master use permits.

all building permits.

We have now added all code complaint files to this, and we're also working to bring all the rental registration inspection ordinance sites into shaping as Seattle as well.

So this is a fantastic tool for staff and the public that continues to expand.

And again, you can just press one of those blue dots and all the relevant information comes up.

To add to that, shaping Seattle is also a work in progress.

This currently exists to show all active applications and active permits, but our desire is to also enhance this to further include permit history as well and all past issued permits and final permits as well.

That's kind of a next step, but somewhere where we're headed.

And that will be a huge improvement because there are a lot of members of the public or applicants that need to do permit research, and they have to physically come down to the Seattle Municipal Tower and go through our microfilm records.

Where now, during the pandemic, they need to email staff and have staff get those documents for them.

So that should save a considerable amount of time for the public.

And coupled with that, we're also in the process of converting all of that microfilm and microfiche history into electronic document management systems so that it'll all be electronically accessible in single place.

So that's a good thing.

So this is Nathan again.

We went through a lot of these in previous discussion just about our new hires to support permit review.

One additional add here that we didn't cover before is we've just hired two new process improvement and technology managers that will really help us with our continuous improvement and our strategic technology planning and our customer service because we know that technology is the background of everything that we do at SDCI.

I just wanted to just throw out some other ideas for you all to think about about how we can improve permitting and I know this will be of special interest to you Council Member Strauss and to you Council Member Ms. Gaeta, the SEPA process does take time.

SEPA projects can be appealed.

SEPA projects are important to neighborhoods because it does provide a public comment process and an appeal process if a community is unhappy with a project, but SEPA thresholds could be raised for projects outside of urban villages, and SIPA thresholds could be raised for commercial projects.

I'm just throwing that out there.

Also, there are, I think, changes that we could make to our design review program to make that faster.

As part of the SEPA process, we often have to do traffic studies per the state SEPA regulations, but in many cases, we don't have the ability to require mitigation.

So that can be frustrating for neighborhoods and for the developer that has to go through the expense of doing the traffic study.

But then we don't have the authority or wherewithal to require mitigation for any traffic impacts that are identified.

That's an issue.

And I know I've raised this many times.

My staff are getting tired of me talking about it, but the land use code is over a thousand pages long.

It's very complicated.

It's frustrating for the public, for staff, and for our applicants.

So that's a really challenging and long-term project to try to improve that land use code, but I think it is something that we need to tackle.

Thank you, and well noted.

I really want to thank you, Darlene, Andy, Director Torgelson for not only this meeting, all of the meetings that you've briefed me on, the education you've provided to me in order to allow me to lead us in reassessing the goals and ensuring that every node of every department that touches permit review is fully staffed and has a little bit of bonus staff in case somebody wants to take deserved leave or retires or moves on to another job.

I do look forward to working with all of you and Council Member Mosqueda over the rest of the summer to have roundtable conversations culminating with a lunch and learn about improving the permit system ahead of the fall budget process.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Great to see y'all.

You too.

Likewise.

And colleagues that was our final item of our agenda today.

We had previously planned to hear from O.

P. C. D. Today, regarding their racial equity report that will inform the comprehensive plan.

Major update process.

That presentation has unfortunately been delayed.

We expect to hear it in July.

Um, Vice Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Mr Chair.

I do want to make some comments about the item that was removed from today's agenda.

And I appreciate, Mr. Chair, your flexibility in me making a few comments about this since it's not technically on the agenda, but it was, if that's okay, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Collins, for the record, in 2018, we included a proviso through my office in the 2019 budget that required a racial equity toolkit.

This toolkit was to evaluate the city's growth strategy and make sure that we looked at an analysis to understand the embedded concerns and priorities within our early planning and community outreach program prior to initiating the comprehensive plan design discussions that are coming up in 2020. The importance of this racial equity toolkit was so that we could have a clear understanding of how our existing zoning policies are either furthering and contributing to discriminatory zoning practices, pushing people out of the city and creating an inequitable housing situation, or whether or not they were meeting our goals of truly creating equity.

The report was due back in December of 2019. This was then delayed to early 2020. COVID hit, and we were told that we could expect a report in 2021, which we assumed was reasonable given the consequences of COVID on our public sector employees and the ways that we could engage with folks.

But since then, it's been delayed monthly.

We truly cannot afford additional delays, and I greatly appreciate the chair's commitment to this issue.

I know that you have been trying to include this in your agenda for the past few months.

and I really appreciate you underscoring that your expectation is that this will come in mid-July.

We cannot afford any additional delays given that this critical report must be made public so that it will help us lay the foundation for what is needed in the comprehensive plan update.

That process begins this year.

This report is critical for helping us understand and chart a course that makes sure that we are on a path towards true equity in our zoning policies, that we really have a chance to examine some of the fundamental aspects of our growth strategy and understand where there's pitfalls.

Seattle's land use and zoning laws, like many other cities, are rooted in a history of racist exclusionary zoning policies, racial restrictive covenants, and redlining policies that have locked Black, Indigenous, and communities of color individuals out of our neighborhoods where there are high opportunities to access and affordable housing.

Seattle's home ownership opportunities have also decreased because of lack of access to housing across our city that affects generational wealth as we know.

The effects of exclusionary zoning policies continue today.

We know that, there's no doubt about it.

And the racial equity toolkit is a tool for us to be able to understand how we as a city can identify ways to address the skyrocketing cost of housing.

Make sure that we're looking at the last decade of lending and of housing affordability and homes that has led to housing affordability and homelessness crises disproportionately impacting BIPOC communities.

We also know that the worsening economic crisis due to the car-centric commuting problems that we have because people have been pushed out of the city is in part related back to our exclusionary zoning policies.

So Mr. Chair, I appreciate your flexibility in allowing for us to continue to demand that this report gets shared.

And I appreciate that folks are still trying to work as fast as they can in the aftermath of the last year of COVID, but we really must have this report shared with us so that we can have the essential information in front of us to address what's needed to be changed in the comprehensive plan.

And I very much look forward to working with you in the upcoming July 14th meeting to have the final report presented.

And thank you very much Vice Chair Mosqueda for that background.

And I do hope I was, our committee meetings are gonna be very packed for the remainder of the year.

And that's why I was really hoping to have that report done today.

So we will make time for it in July and need to have it in July.

So we have the ability to implement any recommendations before we take up the comprehensive plan in September.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other...

Yeah.

Colleagues, any other comments for the good of the order?

Seeing none, this concludes the Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

As a reminder, our next committee will be on July 14th, starting at 9.30 AM.

Thank you for attending.

It is 12.02 and we are adjourned.