SPEAKER_08

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

The September 11, 2024 meeting of the Parks, Public Utilities, and Technology Committee will come to order.

It is 2.02 p.m.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth, chair of the committee, and chair, would you please call the roll?

SPEAKER_21

Council.

SPEAKER_08

Here.

SPEAKER_21

Councilmember Rivera.

Present.

Councilmember Strauss.

SPEAKER_08

Present.

SPEAKER_21

Council President Nelson.

SPEAKER_08

Present.

SPEAKER_21

Five councilmembers are present.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Thank you.

And before we jump into the agenda, I recognize that it is 9-11.

I had an opportunity this year to visit the World Trade Memorial Center back in March.

And there was one name that was etched into my brain for a long time.

9-11 happened when I was a senior in high school.

And there's all the names that are etched there, but one that stands out the most to me that remains in my heart is a fireman named Stephen Siller.

And he belonged to the fire department of Brooklyn One.

And the reason why It's important to know his name is because when he heard about, he had just gotten off, and when he had heard about the towers and the first couple, the first plane that hit, he went back to his fire station after he had gotten off his shift, went back to the fire station.

They had closed the battery tunnel.

He put on 60 pounds of gear and ran a mile and a half from the Brooklyn Fire Station, number one, all the way to the World Trade Centers, up into the tower where he was trying to save people.

And unfortunately, he died.

And there is a memorial for him, which is called Tunnel to Tower.

And they raised millions of dollars for fallen firefighters.

And for people to be able to purchase homes and for their family.

And so I just wanted to recognize 9-11 as being significant in our country and recognizing our first responders and the people that have served our country and like to pass it off to Council Member Kettle if you have a few words.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

And yes, 9-11.

And, you know, I think about, you know, A vision from that day 23 years ago and the days immediately following afterwards is the idea of the empty sky.

And on that day and the days after where we woke up to an empty sky.

On that 9-11, I was back in our country in Virginia at Dam Neck briefing the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group as they were preparing to deploy.

And at the time, I was assigned to Sixth Fleet, which was embarked in USS LaSalle and home-ported in Gaeta, Italy.

Of course, we had been in the counterterrorism fight 11 months almost to the day.

It was the coal bombing.

And I needed to get back.

I drove north.

And my flight out of National was canceled.

And the airport was closed.

And so I continued on to Philadelphia.

And what I'll never forget are the flags.

Bridge after bridge across I-95 had a flag draped down across the side.

And each flag added to the sense of enormity of the attacks, but also the enormity of our country's unified response.

My flight to Rome was one of the first flights to fill the skies.

And I thought about, as we flew across the ocean, 9-11, what laid ahead.

Because obviously, I was in this.

and I knew what was in front of me in terms of the global war on terror, but also what the flags and what they represented.

And that's something that we should reflect on.

And at the time, you know, 23 years ago, I didn't know that a friend of mine was killed in the Pentagon, and eight people in the Chief of Naval Operations intelligence plot were killed, too.

In addition to all those who were killed in the Pentagon, New York and Pennsylvania and elsewhere, I think it's important to recognize this And given the fact where we are in this country, the point that I made about the enormity in terms of our unified response, and I think this is a day that we should reflect upon that and think about it and say to ourselves, let's take a moment.

And given all the division that we have in our country and in our city, we shouldn't exempt ourselves on this day.

So I'd like to ask for a moment of silence.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

We will give 30 seconds of silence to honor the fallen victims of 9-11 and all the first responders as well.

Thank you, everyone.

SPEAKER_02

Chair, can I add something?

Councilmember?

As a New Yorker, I moved here early 2001, actually, and I knew folks that were at the World Trade Center that day, like Councilmember Kettle, and it was a very dark day for New Yorkers, and it's something that reached across the country to Seattle and impacted the entire country, though it happened in New York.

So I really appreciate the chairs taking the time to acknowledge today.

Council Member Kettle, very much appreciate your comments and the moment of silence because many of us did know folks that were there that day.

And also want to acknowledge the firefighters and many of which came from other cities to help out in those days after September 11th when they were still pulling folks out of the rubble there.

So I really appreciate the men and women who put their lives on the line for others.

And so I just wanted to acknowledge, I want to say thank you to the chair for the for the acknowledgement today, because so often we're so busy in our lives and we don't always take the time to think about these things.

And so really much appreciate, as a New Yorker, you bringing this up today.

And again, thank you, Council Member Kettle, for your experience.

I'm sorry for your losses that day, for all our losses.

And thank you for, like I said, that moment of silence.

And thank you to all the firefighters, their families, of the firefighters who perished that day.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you so much.

I know it's always hard to transition, but I'm gonna do the best I can like Al Roker does.

They always, on the Morning Today show, they always have something and they transition to him to talk about something good.

So we have 11 items on the agenda today.

One through five, we have three appointments.

Appointments to Seattle Public Utilities customer review panel the second or number six We have one appointment to the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners Following that we will consider SPU's acquisition of two parcels of land for salmon habitat protection at that we will also consider SPU's acquisition to land surrounding Pipers Creek and SPU's busy buying land.

And then next we will look to vote on the conservation futures levy interlocal agreement.

We will also look to authorize a lease for the Seattle Center.

And then finally, we will have a brief introductory presentation from our Seattle Center on the Memorial Stadium project.

We will now consider the agenda.

If there's no objections, the agenda will be adopted.

Amazing.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

With that, let's jump into hybrid public comment period.

Public comment should be related to items on the agenda today and be within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up?

SPEAKER_21

Currently, we have two in-person speakers signed up and there are no remote speakers.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Each person will get two minutes to speak.

And will you please read the instructions for public comment?

SPEAKER_21

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

I will call on speakers by name in the order in which they registered on the sign up sheet available here in council's chamber.

Council chambers, we will start with in-person speakers.

If you've not registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up to speak before the end of the public comment period.

Just go to the council's website or by signing up on the sign up sheet near the public comment microphone.

The online link is listed on today's agenda.

When speaking, please begin by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

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

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 person.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with Alex Zimmerman, followed by Kayla Peterson.

SPEAKER_12

My name Alex Zimmerman.

It's very good so you remember 9-11.

It's a big terrorist act.

You know what it means, what we have in America.

Yep.

So, I want to explain to you, when we're talking about 9-11, so this is exactly my expression, will come right now, and I give you detail why this happened.

I call Seattle, Seattle fascists with idiotic face, why?

Because 9-11 is a terrorist, a Muslim terrorist, come and destroy America and kill people.

After 20 years, 22 years, we see the same Muslim in street for one year have demonstration.

How is this possible?

Seattle have very short memory or pure freaking idiot or real fascist.

So what does mean fascist?

We don't have America more in Seattle.

You support terrorists, you support bandita.

This demonstration what is coming straight for last year is a nightmare and government approves this.

How is this possible?

We have long history with Muslim problem, with terrorists that has come from Iran, from another country, you know what it means.

And you give these people demonstration for one year.

Thousand people come.

That's exactly what I told about this.

We need change Seattle culture back to America.

I live this 40 years.

But for last 20 years, you know what is mean.

And for last 10 years, you acting like a pure idiot.

Like a retarder.

It's exactly what I see in talking every day.

Stand up America.

Us goal, bring America back.

SPEAKER_21

Our next and final speaker is Kayla Peterson.

SPEAKER_06

Hi, I didn't know the two-minute rule before I came here, so I'm going to try to speak as quickly as humanly possible.

I wanted to say good afternoon, council members, and thank you for listening to my statement.

I'm going to read off my paper because, honestly, I'm not really a fan of public speaking normally, especially in this type of setting, and I've never spoken to city council members before, so I'm a bit nervous.

I'm Kaia Biederson, and I'm a proud member of our community.

I live in the Greenwood neighborhood and bought a home there because I think it has a thriving community fabric, and I wanted to live in a place where people care about each other.

One of the council members who represents me is actually on the committee, Sarah Nelson, so thank you for representing our neighborhood.

It's funny that this is the Committee for Parks, Utilities, and Technology because I have pressing matters I would like to bring to your attention on each of these topics.

With regards to parks, I think Sandal Park in Greenwood is a vibrant center of my neighborhood and I have the privilege of living just a couple blocks away.

It is a place where my neighbors go to have their kids play, sports practices are hosted, and I've used it to read and unsuccessfully run around trying to fly my kite on a day that wasn't windy enough.

It is a place that is very actively used and cherished by the community.

A few months ago, I noticed that a new owner had...

Oh, man, maybe I should skip past this part.

SPEAKER_08

You're fine.

Can you pause the time?

You're good.

Slow down.

You're fine.

And we can also take your comments as well.

So just take your time.

You're fine.

If we can add two more minutes for...

It's Kayla, right?

SPEAKER_99

Kaya.

SPEAKER_08

Kaya.

I'm so sorry.

Okay.

SPEAKER_06

It's okay, it's okay.

SPEAKER_08

Okay, two more minutes for Kaya.

Go ahead, just slow down.

You're doing fabulous, okay?

SPEAKER_06

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08

All right.

SPEAKER_06

OK.

A few months ago, I noticed that a new owner had moved into one of the houses on the perimeter of the park and put up red no parking signs from Home Depot in front of their house.

As we all know, the street in front of their house is public parking, so they shouldn't really be asking people not to park there.

I walked past that house all the time on the way to the grocery store, seething to myself, saying, who do those people think they are, and wondering what I should do?

Ignore it?

Steal their signs and throw them in the trash?

Then two weeks ago, I decided to write them a note.

In that note, I told them that Sandal Park is an important part of the Greenwood community and public parking is part of accessing that.

So if they need a reserved parking spot for an official reason, such as a designated handicap spot, they can contact the city to have official signage installed.

But if it's just a personal preference, I'd like them to reconsider their actions because they feel hostile to the community and people's ability to use the public parking to access the park.

I also told them that even when people weren't saying anything, they were noticing their actions and forming opinions on them.

Also, because I don't want to make it sound like I'm calling myself Mother Teresa over here and want to be upfront and honest, I also said that I thought their signs were tacky, gauche, and selfish, and that it's nice to have a house that's actually a part of community, not an individual fortress.

To my surprise, they took down the signs by the next time I walked by.

Feeling very smug as I walked past, I realized with horror that the whole reason that they had put up those signs was because people have realized that the parking enforcement around or that the parking around the perimeter of that park isn't getting enforcement of the 72-hour rule, where you can only sit your car in the same spot on the street for 72 hours before it must be moved, and it has created a snowball effect of people using it to camp out their vehicles.

My smugness evaporated when I realized I was going to look like a real idiot and jerk if I wrote that note about their tacky signs and loving community, and then they got an RV...

Basically, I was gonna ask if parking could be enforced around the park to make sure people can access the park.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome, thank you.

If you want, you can also leave your comments in there and we're gonna follow up with you to address that.

Thank you for coming down and speaking.

You did great, okay, so good job, thank you.

Feel free to come back.

Thank you.

If there's no, are there any more additional public speakers?

SPEAKER_21

There are no more additional speakers.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

We'll now proceed to the items of business.

We have a number of appointments to SPU customer review panel.

Oh, excuse me.

We read the agenda into the, the item into the agenda.

Clerk, my apologies.

SPEAKER_21

Yes, no problem.

Agenda items number one through number five are the appointments numbers 03012 through 03016, which are the appointments of Manav Goel, Allison Mettler, Nafiso Samatar, as members of the Seattle Public Utilities Customer Review Panel for a term of July 31st, 2027. and the reappointments of Gretchen Glaub and Mickey Sotos as members of the Seattle Center Advisory Commission, also for a term to July 31st, 2027. This is for briefing discussion and possible vote.

And speaking today is Andrew Lee, General Manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome, thank you, Director Lee.

Thank you all for being here.

We're gonna consider all these appointments at one time.

Please state your name for the record and we'll just pass it off to you.

SPEAKER_14

Andrew Lee, General Manager for Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_04

My name is Miki Sotos.

I'm a local small business owner.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

And it's all to you.

Passing the ball to you for the dunk.

SPEAKER_14

Good afternoon, Chair Hollingsworth and members of the committee.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to attend today and introduce you to the new cohort for the customer review panel.

They're going to be partnering with SPU on our community-centered utility vision.

The nominees for this customer review panel really expand our connections to community organizations that serve black, indigenous, people of color, low income, unhoused, immigrant and refugee communities, and also increase our BIPOC member representation and include representation from small businesses like Mickey and the tech industry.

We are they're extremely dedicated to their work in their respective communities and we're really honored as a utility to have that they've chosen to volunteer to make SPU in Seattle a great place for everyone.

I'd like to take the next few moments to introduce the new members and the reappointed members and share a little bit about them.

So I'll start off with Nafiso Samatar.

Nafiso, who I believe may be attending virtually, is the president of the Somali Business Alliance.

And for the past 20 years, she has focused on helping small businesses, especially in minority, immigrant, and refugee communities by helping them navigate city services.

She has a strong interest in education outreach to small businesses on the benefits of sustainability and conservation efforts to reduce their utility costs.

The second new member we have is Manav Goel.

Manav works in South Lake Union as a technical lead in social impact at META.

He is a current board member at Sound Generations, and he has strong interest in upgrading the utility infrastructure for climate resilience, circular economy innovations, and using information technologies to improve performance and ensure equitable community engagement.

And our last new member is Allison Mettler.

Allison is a resident of the Lawton Park neighborhood and volunteers with Friends of Discovery Park.

She worked actually as an intern for SPU's water efficiency team earlier this year.

And she has a strong interest in improving water quality through stormwater runoff management, removing barriers to electronic waste collection, and communicating SPU priorities to our communities.

In addition to these three new members, we also have two reappointing members, including Mickey, who's here, and then Gretchen Glaub, who I believe is also attending virtually.

Just a short, quick summary on Miki.

She's a 30-year veteran of the food service industry and currently co-owns Bang Bang Kitchen in Rainier Valley and Bang Bang Cafe in Belltown.

She's a vocal advocate for small business issues and an active participant in multiple social and small business causes.

She has a strong interest in providing equal equality of services to all our neighborhoods and increasing education about clean water issues, especially in marginalized communities.

And then, like I mentioned, Gretchen Glab, who's in attendance virtually, she's a salmon recovery coordinator for Snohomish County.

She's interested and passionate about our Puget Sound with a focus on endangered species and salmon recovery, specifically addressing water quality issues and contaminants.

SO ALL FIVE OF THESE MEMBERS IN ADDITION TO OUR EXISTING CUSTOMER REVIEW PANEL MEMBERS REALLY BUILD ON OUR GOAL TO EXPAND DIVERSITY OF THE PANEL, BRINGING A WIDE RANGE OF EXPERIENCE, BACKGROUND, AND GEOGRAPHIC LOCATIONS AND DIVERSITY TO OUR PANEL.

AND SO AT THIS POINT, I'D ACTUALLY LIKE TO INVITE OUR NOMINEES IN ATTENDANCE TO SPEAK BRIEFLY AND INTRODUCE THEMSELVES TO THE COMMITTEE, STARTING WITH MICKEY, AND THEN WE'LL GO TO NAFISO AND THEN GRETCHEN.

SPEAKER_04

My name is Miki Sotos.

Like I said, I'm a small business owner.

I have Bang Bang Kitchen and Bang Bang Cafe.

I've been a business owner for about 15 years.

And during pandemic, I had a business called Cafe Petty Rosso on Capitol Hill.

We were really close to the protest area.

And I went to a fire, like a SPU meeting safety.

We were trying to figure out how to get porta potties and whatnot and make sure that the area was getting cleaned up.

And I met the...

the person before Andrew, mommy.

And we were talking and it was really with everything going on.

And I've only been in the private sector my whole life.

And I really wanted to get involved in some civil issues and whatnot and start kind of dedicating to some more public service.

So I got nominated for this.

And it's been very interesting as somebody in the private sector learning about how government works, about how some of these things work and how we can educate our community.

Because a lot of these things I didn't even know.

I've been a business owner for 15 years and I had no idea about some of these programs.

So I've been really able to communicate them to my neighborhood.

Belltown is fairly wealthy, but South Seattle is not.

And my community members, a lot of them don't even know about some of the services that they can access with SBU.

So it's been beneficial for myself and my community to be a part of it.

And thank you.

I didn't know I was going to be speaking like this today.

SPEAKER_14

Thanks so much, Mickey.

And then Nafiso, are you in attendance virtually?

SPEAKER_24

Hi.

Hi, everyone.

This is Nafiso Samatar.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, hi, it's Nafiso.

I'm amazed to see the council.

It's been a long time.

It's nice to see you all.

This is Nafiso Samatar, Somali Independent Business Alliance person, and also I'm a founder.

My goal is to support the community and live in healthy well-being.

I'm a community organizer.

SPEAKER_14

Thank you so much, Nafiso.

And then Gretchen, if you are online as well.

SPEAKER_21

Okay.

I don't think we have Gretchen here today.

SPEAKER_14

No Gretchen.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, I'm glad both Mickey and Nafiso had a chance to attend.

And you can see just, again, we're really, really excited about this new cohort and just appreciate their dedication.

Anytime somebody volunteers, to do something like this.

I am so amazed at their dedication and it's so commendable.

So really, really excited to have them on board.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Thank you, Director Lee.

And so grateful for people, I always say this, for your service, especially as a small business owner, to donate your time, whatever time you have left, you know, throughout the day.

And very familiar with the cafe.

I had to look it up because I'm vegan and I've had your mac and cheese.

The vegan mac is fire.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, yeah, I've been there before.

So it's really a pleasure to meet you and thank you.

And I see Council President has a comment.

SPEAKER_20

First of all, I didn't know you were vegan.

Just kidding.

So thank you very much for being willing to serve.

I wanted to say, first of all, Nafiso described herself and was described as a community organizer.

I happen to know that she is a force of nature, and her influence and her connections and the way that she can translate SPU's mission to the community all over the city, and then also provide input to how the utility can best serve the community is really going to be very valuable, so good choice.

And then I wanted to say to you, Nikki, that as a small business owner, A lot of small business owners, if they don't work in government, don't know about the incentives for conservation that the utility offers.

And I'm just really glad that somebody with that mindset is going to be serving, hopefully, because you'll also be able to share that important knowledge and help the utility understand how to best respond to small business.

I understand that this body of work is largely around rates, but I'm just interested in having the voices that are gonna be really helpful to Seattle.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you, Council President.

Do we have any other comments from my colleagues at all?

Awesome.

Well, easy money.

That's not my favorite.

That's my favorite thing.

I use basketball terms and whatever terms.

Okay.

Well, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03012 to 03016 to the Seattle Public Utilities Customer Review Panel.

Is there a second?

SPEAKER_11

Second.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of these five appointments.

Are there any other additional comments?

Seeing none, clerk, will you please call the roll?

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

SPEAKER_07

Aye, yes.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Kettle?

SPEAKER_07

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Council President Nelson?

SPEAKER_07

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments and the reappointments for the SPU customer review panel be confirmed and be sent to September 17th, 2024 city council meeting.

There's no further questions.

We'll move on to item agenda number six.

Thank you.

Agenda item number six.

Thank you both.

Appreciate you for being here.

Clerk, we re-plead agenda item six into the record.

SPEAKER_21

Agenda item number six is the appointment of Elise Chisholm-Claire as a member of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners for a term to March 31st, 2027. This is for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

And speaking today is Christopher Williams of Seattle Parks and Recreation.

SPEAKER_05

Christopher Williams, welcome back.

Thank you so much.

It's good to be here.

Thank you, council members, for allowing us to...

have an opportunity to appoint a new park board chair.

This is one of the most intensive volunteer board opportunities, and we're always excited when someone expressed interest in joining the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners.

I believe we've got Elise on the call.

I'll make a brief introduction and then turn it over to her.

Elise is a marketing and communication strategist based in the Ravenna neighborhood.

She is eager to contribute her experience and perspective to city parks and recreation initiatives.

As a co-founder of the Friends of Ravenna Cowan Green Space Group, Elise Chisholm has experience working with a variety of city departments and neighborhood stakeholders.

In her own words, beyond Ravenna Cowan and other beloved parks in my backyard, I'm passionate about preserving the natural environment and creating safe, inviting spaces throughout the Seattle community.

My husband and I are regular bike commuters, and our family frequently visits playgrounds, trails, game fields, swimming pools across seven districts.

I want to ensure they continue to be vibrant, accessible, and welcoming destinations for all Seattleites and visitors to enjoy.

As an experienced marketing and communication leader with a focus on innovation and environmental sustainability, she will bring important perspective to the work of the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners.

Elise is a bike commuter.

and a mother of two young kids who frequently visit city playgrounds, giving her a keen appreciation for the importance of accessible, well-maintained parks, swimming pools, community facilities.

She wants to ensure they continue to be vibrant, welcoming destinations for all Seattleites to enjoy.

So that is a big vision and a great, City Council Chambers, introduction for a lease and the lease, I will defer to you to add a few of your own words to that introduction.

SPEAKER_00

City Council Chambers, hi everyone thanks so much for the intro and I appreciate this appointment to the board, I am, as you heard really passionate about the city's parks, I want to help make sure they are safe and uplifting spaces for.

all Seattleites and visitors.

And I'm really looking forward to getting to work with my fellow board members.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you, Elise.

Thank you, Christopher.

We're looking forward to having you.

We know that again, it's volunteer work and it's tough work, but it's great to hear someone passionate about our parks and our outdoor spaces.

And I know that this is from district four and I would love for the council member, council member Rivera from district four to say a few words.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Christopher Williams, for introducing Elise.

And also, Elise, Christopher Williams, and I mean to scare you by saying what the commitment is to this.

But all kidding aside, I'm really proud and very appreciative that Elise is willing to take on I would like to say thank you to all of you who have contributed to this work.

As a volunteer we have said this many times as we have appointed folks to the various boards and commissions here at the city that folks do this because they care about the city.

Elise, I'm so happy in particular that you're going to be sitting on the parks board.

I will say Elise comes very well recommended from community constituents in the district because they have noted she is really committed.

She's very active.

She really cares.

She represents the district well, and she really wants to make a difference.

And whereas other folks might sit by and watch other people do the work, I always say she raises her hand.

I will do it.

Who will do it?

Elise said I will do it.

And so I'm very appreciative for her efforts currently, because she very much currently is active.

And then now I'm very grateful for her willingness to sit on this board and represent the district.

So thank you, Elise, and thank you, Christopher Williams.

Always great to see you.

Good to see you.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Thank you for that, Council Member Rivera.

Do any of my colleagues have any other additional comments?

Well, seeing that, Elise, thank you.

We look forward to you serving on the board.

Thank you, Christopher Williams, for all your help and work.

I now move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03002 to the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded from Councilmember Rivera, District 4. And Clerk, will you please call the roll?

SPEAKER_21

Councilmember Strauss?

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Kettle.

SPEAKER_08

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Rivera.

Emphatic aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Five in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_08

Easy money.

Motion carries and the recommendation to the appointment confirmed will be sent to September 17th, 2024 City Council meeting.

Clerk, please read item agenda number seven into the record.

SPEAKER_21

Agenda item number seven is Council Bill 120854, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing the acquisition by negotiation of two parcels of land identified as King County parcel numbers 2752200050 and 275-22-00091 located at 21, 226, 221st Avenue Southeast in King County for salmon habitat protection and watershed management and granting a life estate to Helen R. Sherry.

This is for briefing discussion and possible vote and presenting today is Brent Lackey from Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome, thank you.

I know we're playing musical chairs with SPU and Seattle Parks.

Thank you all for coming back.

Please introduce yourself for the record and we can just jump right in.

Andrew Lee, Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_03

I'm Brent Lackey with Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_16

Jerry Caruso, Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_10

And Brian Goodnight, Central Council Central Staff.

SPEAKER_14

Just a quick tech question.

Should we be presenting from this computer or do you have the presentation already?

SPEAKER_21

I can bring it up on that computer for you.

SPEAKER_14

And I'll lead off with just a few words.

First off, just thank you, Chair Hollingsworth and members of the committee again.

We have before you the first of two ordinances today to authorize SPU to acquire property.

And this is the first one, and it's to support salmon habitat protection in the Cedar River.

As context, SPU is now in year 25, which is halfway through the 50-year Cedar River Habitat Conservation Plan.

We refer to this as the HCP, which is all about protecting endangered species and our Cedar water supply.

And just as a reminder, our Cedar River water supply provides about two-thirds of the region's drinking water for 1.6 million people in Greater King County.

One piece of that Habitat Conservation Plan is the Downstream Habitat Protection Program.

our downstream habitat program that protects and restores salmon habitat between Lake Washington and the Cedar River water supply.

To date, this program has acquired about 70 acres of critical habitat, and this acquisition, this particular acquisition that we're hearing about today, which is entirely grant funded, by the way, will add another 20 acres of high-priority river habitat.

So with me today is Brent Lackey, who manages the SPU Downstream Habitat Program and is undertaking this work.

Brent will provide you with the project overview and answer any questions you may have prior to your consideration of this legislation.

Thanks, Brent.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Members, for having me.

I appreciate it.

I'm really excited to bring you this super exciting accomplishment for this program, the Downstream Habitat Program, which is a specific part of the HCP that focuses on the Cedar River between our watershed and Lake Washington.

What I'm bringing you today is an ordinance to allow us to acquire a 20-acre piece of land that's out on the Cedar River near Maple Valley, just north of Highway 169 and Highway 18 crossing, a piece of property that's been a top priority for the salmon recovery plan in the region for a long time, and an owner of which I've been working with for a long time to try and get to this moment of acquisition.

It's a piece right on the Cedar River adjacent to a piece of critical salmon habitat restoration work we did just this past year.

It also includes a life estate agreement with Helen Sherry, the 93-year-old property owner who lives there and has a lot of pride in the place and wants to finish her life there.

And so we've worked out a situation where she can do that and we can continue to try and make strides for the salmon that annually spawn right on her property.

So here's where it is.

Thanks also to Jerry for being here to represent the real property folks.

You can see on the maps just there north of Maple Valley right on the Cedar River.

Looking a little closer, here's a zoom of the actual 20 acre parcel.

The area in light blue teal there is the whole property, and you can see the river running along on the left side of the photograph.

And then the highlighted area in the blue polygon there is the area of life estate where she's gonna continue to stay, about a three acre area, so that we can go ahead and move forward with trying to design and do restoration on the remaining riparian and aquatic portion of the parcel.

This is where it is on the right side map, kind of in the context of the whole reach that we've been working on for a while now.

All the green parcels there are already owned by the City of Seattle Public Utilities, and her parcel is the one highlighted as target in yellow there.

The green area there highlighted in purple dashed lines is the area of about 20 acres that was restored for habitat last year.

You can see in the photograph on the left how that restoration looks just as of this year and how it's contiguous with the parcel.

in the yellow bounded area there that we're proposing to acquire with this ordinance.

Again, this is a top priority of the Regional Sand Recovery Plan.

So what we're doing is acquiring this property in fee with the life estate that I mentioned in the agreement.

Happily, as Andrew mentioned, we are already in a position of having acquired about $4 million in grants to do this work.

We think the total cost is only going to be about $3 million all in, including all the work to do the work.

So it doesn't end up costing our rate payers anything, which is terrific.

And we've already authorized the funding for spending on this project in past budget ordinance.

That's really the essence of it.

Great opportunity that I've been working on for a while.

I'm really pleased to be here bringing it to you.

And I'll just mention that photograph here is a couple of sockeye that were spawning in channel habitat that we built just this past year.

It was about a week after we opened it to the river.

Fish came right in and started spawning.

SPEAKER_08

That's so cool.

Thank you so much.

Brent, is there anything from central staff?

Brian, good night.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Chair.

I'll just note that SPU is requesting for this item and the next item a vote today, which is a little bit out of the ordinary.

Sometimes the committees touch the bills twice, but since we'll be moving into budget and there'll be no more committee meetings, they just ask for a vote today if possible.

SPEAKER_03

I just want to add my gratitude to that.

Helen's in great shape, but she is 93, so we thought it would be expedient to go ahead and get this happening while we could.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you.

My grandmother lived to be 101, so I'm sure, you know, and I attribute that to a tall glass of vodka and a splash of orange juice for color is what she told me.

Kept the day going.

Do any of my colleagues have any questions regarding this?

Council Member Strauss?

SPEAKER_07

Yes.

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

We all don't have Hollingsworth genes.

Some of us have Levi's.

Strauss.

Sorry, back.

Brent, I'm not going to let you off that easy because you mentioned a couple things that you kind of glossed over there.

You're saving ratepayer fees.

You're helping establish the legacy of Helen.

You are protecting the environment.

And you're doing it all in one hand.

So can we dig into this a little bit more?

So maybe can you share the story of Helen Sherry?

She owns what I believe is a 25-acre parcel, and you've notched off five.

She hasn't been really interested in selling, but can you tell us how we got to today?

SPEAKER_03

Sure.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Helen is a real remarkable lady.

When I first met her about five or six years ago, starting to talk about trying to acquire her parcel as part of this program, she had the upper hand on negotiation on me because she was actually on top of a 20-foot extension ladder painting her barn.

And that would have been, I guess, in about her 88th year of life.

So she's a real robust person.

She has a lot of love for the place.

I've been lucky to work with a program that has a lot of support from the folks at King County and in the RIAA 8 Salmon Recovery Council.

And it's just given us an opportunity to do a lot of the good work that's already been identified and prioritized there.

It remains a great thing that while we're trying to restore fish habitat throughout Puget Sound that there is a pretty good amount of grant money, both local and state money and federal money now and again available.

And we've been happy to be quite successful in acquiring a bunch of it.

The project out immediately adjacent to what we are acquiring here that I showed you was a great success of this program.

And we just want to out loud invite everybody here to come out and visit anytime you want to see it.

I'll show it to you because it's a real super place.

SPEAKER_07

And just while we're on this presentation, if we could go back to slide five, just to help show...

what the importance of this.

The crosshatch in red, it looks like from my perspective, is river.

Is that correct?

That's not land?

SPEAKER_03

The stuff in river or the red hatching is parcels that we're still sort of working on trying to acquire.

exciting thing about this one the target parcel that you see there is it's one of the two only two sort of 20 acre parcels out in this part of the valley in the river so it gets a lot of potential habitat acquired in one swoop and basically puts us at the point where i'm hoping to work with the folks who run the the Cedar River Masons Club Park that's right there, the Royal Archmasons Club Park that's north of this one, leaves it as the only remaining sort of target parcel in this two-mile reach.

So we're slowly chunking away at what can be a real significant piece of salmon recovery throughout the whole watershed.

SPEAKER_07

And if I could just guess from what I just heard from you is that you met her when she was on a 20-foot extension ladder repainting her house in her late 80s.

She probably was not interested in selling.

SPEAKER_03

She has been holding out for a while, yeah.

I think it's just evidence that it's really important to develop a relationship with folks on the ground, make sure they understand that you're not trying to hustle them, and to really kind of help convey what you're after.

I think it helped us a lot that we were able to do what we said we were going to do next door to her on the restoration side.

And...

And at some point, people usually start to see the opportunity.

I think she was afraid to leave, and I'm really excited that we were able to work out an arrangement that basically has me sort of become part of her family while she's still alive and out there.

SPEAKER_07

Because what I'm reading here is that we've carved off about five acres for her to remain in perpetuity, or can you help me understand how that works?

SPEAKER_03

Right, sure.

Yeah, a life estate arrangement.

The whole parcel is 20 acres, and it's a three-acre square there in the upland piece of the parcel that she's going to stay on.

It's basically all our buildings except for one sort of outbuilding.

A life stay is a great thing because it basically gives her a chance to sell her property and figure out what's happening with her estate.

She doesn't have any direct heirs.

So she wants to sort of, I guess, if you will, take it with her a little bit by making a deal now, but not having to leave the property because she wouldn't know where to go.

And it also affords her some of the financing she'll need to finish out what are probably going to be successful but dwindlingly healthy years where she doesn't get to always be painting her barn or as she does now I didn't mention this mow the entire 20 acre turf field twice a week I'll wrap up I know we got a packed agenda but I just like

SPEAKER_07

You're not unlocking 20 acres.

You're creating what I believe is 40 acres with the adjacent parcel.

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, the immediate adjacent parcel is almost 20 acres.

It's about not quite 19 acres that's there in that sort of triangular-shaped piece that's right upstream.

So altogether, that piece becomes about 40 acres.

And then there's another sort of 15, 12, 15 acres downstream there at the top of the map that you see.

So once we get to the whole reach, it'll really...

Turned into a big significant sort of size contributor But even as it were we've created about 5,000 feet of new side channel habitat for juvenile salmon on the on the parcel We were stored last year and we're looking to basically just plug in and do more the same right on her parcel And thankfully she lives in that upland portion.

So it'll still just sort of make it like a park for her It won't impact her

SPEAKER_07

And I'd say one of the best parts of the story, the legacy there, beyond just having grant funds to pay for this so rate payers and the general fund aren't impacted, now it creates the next target parcel as the real leverage.

Helen's legacy is that she has continued to support and preserve salmon habitat beyond her own life for future generations.

And it really puts the pressure on that last little bit.

And I know...

Brent, you're very good at going after grant funding as the budget chair.

I appreciate that.

So just thank you for that work.

Question here is, how else can we honor her legacy?

Is there something that we as the city of Seattle could do?

And if you don't have an answer now, I'm...

SPEAKER_03

we can circle back certainly give you part of an answer I mean one of the things that I sort of tried to sweeten the agreement with with her knowing how she feels about the place and that she's been living out there for many many decades is that we're planning to basically do what is required by grants but then do it and enhance it which is put a sign out there and name the place for her so we're going to make this the Helen Sherry natural area and then we'll put a sort of state parkish kind of sign designating that that'll accomplish the goals of some of the grants the grants will pay for it but it'll also sort of give her a named legacy there and I she wouldn't really speak she's very modest person she wouldn't speak to her enthusiasm about it but I could tell that it's sort of very much pleased her that she would have that sort of little piece so maybe when we get to that point and we're anointing and I'll invite you back

SPEAKER_07

That'd be great.

Thank you so much for your good work, Brent.

Jerry, we couldn't have done this without you because you're in the real estate department.

We can't do anything without you.

And last point here, Brent, love the fish button up.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks, mate.

SPEAKER_08

I don't have eyes that well.

I didn't see those little fishes.

Chair, do you know what a fish is without eyes?

Yes.

We can always count on Council Member Strauss for the dad jokes.

And there was only a couple laughs.

That's usually what happened.

There were more than usual.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Kettle.

SPEAKER_15

Just a quick question.

Thank you for all your work.

And if you are now part of the family, does that mean you can't retire from SBU until, you know?

SPEAKER_03

I'm going to be here a while.

I'm sending my son to college next Monday, so I'll be here a while.

SPEAKER_15

I just want to ensure that the relationship is maintained, given the chance for a Hollingsworth-Jeans kind of scenario.

SPEAKER_03

My goal is to keep building the legacy out here for sure for years to come.

SPEAKER_15

All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_03

Councilmember Rivera?

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Chair.

Brent, thank you for the work and SPU in general for the work on this.

This is amazing.

You know, we've said it before in terms of folks, you know, if they have a parcel of land that they want to donate to the city for this or a park, we certainly welcome in and we're so appreciative.

People care so much about the city and about salmon recovery.

And I sit on, I have the good fortune and luck to sit on the WIRA 8. Salmon Recovery Council.

And so this is something that I really care about and something that's really great for salmon conservation and restoration for our city and our state.

And so thank you for the work.

And I wanted to call out WIRA 8 because this is something I know that they care about and super excited about.

So thank you for the work there.

And thank you to Helen for this wonderful contribution to our state, not just our city.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_08

Absolutely, thank you, Helen, and thank you, Brent, for developing the relationship.

You know, just thinking about like five years and just developing that relationship is phenomenal, and then how SPU, how we're gonna do it in a very intentional way, and just honor that legacy, and then, you know, continue to help our environment and sustain our environment.

I just think it's the best way, so thank you.

My honor.

And looking forward to seeing more of the fish shirts soon, possibly.

Okay, awesome.

Love fish shirts.

Okay, good.

If there's not any more questions, I'm going to move that the committee recommend passage of a council bill 120854. Do we have a second?

SPEAKER_02

Second.

SPEAKER_08

It's been moved and seconded.

And to recommend the passage of the bill, are there any additional comments about this?

Seeing none, clerk, will you please call the roll?

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

SPEAKER_14

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Kettle?

SPEAKER_14

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Five in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_08

Motion carries, committee recommendation that the bill pass on.

It will be sent to September 17th, 2024, city council meeting.

We'll move to agenda item number eight.

And I said it right that time, agenda item.

Clerk, please read the agenda item number eight into the roll.

SPEAKER_21

Agenda item number eight is Council Bill 120855, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing the general manager, CEO of Seattle Public Utilities or designee to acquire by negotiation or eminent domain two separate parcels of land in Seattle for utility purposes identified as King County parcel number 270-560-0010, located at 9740 8th Avenue Northwest, and King County parcel number 270-560-0007, located at 711 Northwest, 100th Street, and to execute, accept, and record deeds, conveyance documents, and agreements deemed by the general manager CEO to be necessary to these transaction on behalf of the city.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

I know that was a mouthful.

Thank you, Clerk.

Thank you all.

Just please reintroduce yourself real quick for the record, and you can jump right into the presentation and let me know if you need help with loading it up or whatever's needed.

SPEAKER_14

Great.

SPEAKER_08

Again, Andrew Lee, General Manager for Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_16

Jerry Caruso, Real Property Manager for Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_09

Chris Horvath-Drange, Waste Water Line of Business for Seattle Public Utilities.

SPEAKER_10

And Brian Goodnight, Council Central Staff.

SPEAKER_14

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth, members of the committee again.

And we are going to stick to the theme of fish and property acquisition.

This time, though, it's the second acquisition ordinance we have to acquire two properties on Pipers Creek in the city of Seattle near Carkeek Park.

With this acquisition, SPU can make necessary improvements to fish passage, which is required by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Just as way of background, as development and urbanization occurred over the last century, streams were often routed into culverts, which are pipes that go underneath roads or properties.

But those culverts can be barriers to fish trying to reach upstream habitat.

You might have read recently in the Seattle Times about statewide regulations requiring wash dots.

to address some of these fish passage barriers.

And statewide regulations are increasingly requiring culvert owners to remove barriers to restore fish passage.

In instances like this one where SPU-owned stream culverts are located on private property, current and future private development may be impeded, may impede our ability to meet state requirements and replace the culverts with passable structures.

So the legislation before you enables SPU to get ahead of one such case on this issue.

With me today is Jerry Caruso, SPU's real property manager, who is going to present on this acquisition and can also answer your questions in advance of your approval for this acquisition.

And at this point, I'll hand it off to Jerry.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew, and welcome committee chair and members of the committee and the public.

I'm Jerry Caruso.

I'm the real property manager for Seattle Public Utilities, and I'm here to present an ordinance on the purchase of property in the north area of Seattle.

This This ordinance will authorize SPU to acquire two parcels that will enable us to comply with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife's culvert permit requirements for repairing culverts.

It will allow us to meet the fish passage requirements when we do have to maintain and repair this culvert in the future.

The parcels are located in the Northwest Seattle just off Holman Road near the QFC.

And let's see, parcel one is highlighted in green and is a vacant parcel on Northwest 100th Street.

And parcel two is a is located on 8th Avenue and is comprised of three existing buildings with a single residential occupant.

And the blue line on the map depicts Pipers Creek as it crosses through both lots.

You can see on the top, it's going through a vacant lot and on the parcel number two, it does cut right through a substantial portion of the property.

And here's another view of showing both parcels with Piper's Creek running through it.

The Shape Our Water program is a broad planning program for the utility and for the drainage line of business.

It involves planning for the city's future drainage needs and the needs for identifying investments to improve water quality and efficiency.

Piper's Creek is an open creek for most of its run, yet a portion of the creek has been placed in a pipe, and it's piped underneath both these parcels.

The pipe is 67 years old and will need maintenance in the near future.

Fish and Wildlife has stated that they will not issue a permit to repair the creek unless it is made fish passable, which requires a wider footprint to daylight it.

The property owners have both initiated some permits and had plans to develop these sites which would impact SPU's ability to comply with the fish and wildlife requirements.

We approached the property owners and informed them of our situation and we've been in positive negotiations with them.

Acquiring these parcels will significantly reduce our future acquisition costs.

by buying them before the owners make any significant investments into the land.

In addition, these lots will also serve, potentially serve as a site for stormwater control facilities and water treatment facility for right-of-way drainage.

And in addition, the parcels, although we do not have a design plan for them yet, as that's a future plan, they will add some open space to the city when we do acquire them and maintain the culverts.

The total acquisitions will amount to about 9.1 million, and those funds are already authorized in the 24 adopted budget by SPU, and we will be acquiring these parcels in fee title.

That's all I had from the presentation, and open to questions.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Thank you, Jerry.

Brian, will you give us anything from central staff?

No comments on this one.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Well, that was easy.

Thank you.

I definitely had a presentation about this and just understanding, you know, just the infrastructure and everything.

So I really appreciate just the heads up on this and want to now pass it to my colleagues if they have any questions.

Council Member Strauss, I see thumbs up.

SPEAKER_07

Thank you.

This is a unique parcel.

It used to be in District 6 until I got gerrymandered.

No offense to you, Jerry.

I'm really happy to have Magnolia in my district, but it was a real loss to lose Crown Hill in this area in particular.

Kind of as your story you shared a long time ago, we would just bury culverts and call it streams.

And so my entire life I've driven northbound on Holman Road.

And there's a little sign that says crossing Piper's Creek.

And I always remember being very confused as how is there a creek under this concrete?

This is a unique and it's a very prudent decision that we're making today.

This is one of the, these are two of the largest parcels in the area.

They are currently, as former land use chair, I can tell you that they are low rise.

And so I'm just, if you could go back a couple slides, you can see actually, the number of adjacent...

So right there.

So those townhomes that are adjacent to these parcels, if we don't make this purchase now, this entire area will be...

And there's no problem with density.

It is the problem with multiple owners increasing and escalating the cost of returning our natural environment to previous and better standards.

I think of...

In the same way that as a child, well, even today, I go to Northgate Mall, but it's in a better condition today than I've ever seen it before.

But there is a big parking lot just to the south of the mall that I would be told that, oh, that's where Thornton Creek is.

And again, as a child, I'd look out onto a paved asphalt parking lot to say, how is there a creek there?

Today, or I guess a decade ago, we did the Thornton Creek daylighting project that has the Regal Cinemas and watershed pub and cantina and now housing as well that has daylit thornton creek improved the habitat for the salmon there but if we hadn't made that decision right then we would have lost the moment because again that property becomes the escalates in value and in worth and so and chris i don't know if you've got anything more that you want to share i i would just say you know the Of the properties around there, the next one to the south is also quite large, single owner.

I watched this property transfer hands in the last four years, and so I'm just a bit relieved that we're taking it on.

SPEAKER_16

The property to the south, we do have an easement in it, and there's more of an open space to that parcel.

SPEAKER_09

Now, Council Member, I don't have anything to add other than you stated it.

very succinctly that obtaining these parcels rights now will save repairs greatly in the future once the development potential would be realized.

SPEAKER_07

I'll just make one last point.

Looking at this slide, what is hard to see is in the lower right-hand corner, that little bit of greenbelt.

Colleagues, that is the creek.

That creek flows directly into Carkeek Park, where elementary school students have been doing salmon, where they raise salmon, essentially, in Carkeek Park, and this has been going on.

SPEAKER_20

Salmon in schools.

I was the salmon in schools mom in elementary school.

Great use of, that's a really good educational tool.

SPEAKER_07

Nailed it.

So Salmon in Schools, council president mom, was working on this creek just a little bit lower.

And when I'm looking at the SDCIGIS map, and you can almost actually see it on this, it says Pipers Creek right there as it crosses the red boundary.

What SDCIGIS map shows is that the creek goes directly underneath that building to the far left.

And colleagues, that's, I guess, the point that I'm trying to make is we're not only helping create a better environment, we're not only taking action at a unique and prudent moment, but we're helping students learn.

We're helping salmon moms everywhere.

I mean, this is just a really good news story.

So I just want to thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Jerry.

Great work.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Does anyone have any further, Sam and Mom?

No, I'm just playing.

Council President.

SPEAKER_20

I do have a question.

I'm assuming that there are situations or parcels all over the city where it would be advantageous to do this kind of improvement.

So do you have a big sort of list of priorities all over town that And are we just going to go down the list?

SPEAKER_16

Part of the Shape Our Water project is to identify those locations.

So the Shape Our Water project is a very broad planning project for the utility.

And we are putting together, identifying, evaluating, and assessing the priorities of various sites that we note will be issues for us in the future.

Thanks.

SPEAKER_14

That being said, you're correct.

Citywide issue.

That's actually a statewide issue.

And the more the regulations have tightened up, the more it pushes us into a situation where we need to acquire some of these properties.

So we very likely will be coming back in the future with other acquisitions that will be similar to this one.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

There's a consent decree on the state and they pass that to us with a regulation.

Right.

For permitting.

SPEAKER_08

And I apologize, Council President Salmon.

Come on.

I'll take it.

All right, awesome.

Anyone else have any comments?

Thank you.

Well, thank you all for the presentation.

Like I said, I had a brief presentation from you all about all the even more acquisitions that could possibly be coming our way from SPU and all the environmental impact pieces are the components to that.

So just really appreciate that.

And thank you all.

If my colleagues don't have any other questions, I'm gonna move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120855. Do I have a second?

SPEAKER_20

Second.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome, thank you.

Moved and seconded.

And are there any further comments?

No?

I see Council Member Strauss smiling, but I'm gonna take that as a no.

I just think he likes to smile at me.

It's been moved and seconded.

Can we go ahead and take the roll, please, clerk?

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Kettle?

SPEAKER_08

Aye.

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Council President Nelson?

SPEAKER_20

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Chair Hollingsworth?

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Five in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_08

Motion carries, and this will be sent to September 17th council meeting.

Thank you.

We're going to move on to agenda item number nine.

Thank you, SPU.

SPEAKER_07

Nice work.

Chair, just point of personal privilege.

I believe that Piper's Creek runs into a bay in Puget Sound, but I learned recently that the seagulls stopped flying over it.

SPEAKER_08

Was that a joke?

SPEAKER_07

No, because then they would be bagels.

SPEAKER_08

That was a good one.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Will you please read item nine into the agenda?

SPEAKER_21

Agenda item number nine is Council Bill 120843, an ordinance relating to King County Conservation Futures levy proceeds authorizing the mayor or a designee to enter into amendments two, three, and four to the Conservation Futures interlocal cooperation agreement between King County and the City of Seattle for open space acquisition projects.

This is for briefing discussion and possible vote.

And presenting today are Christopher Williams and Lise Ward from Seattle Parks and Recreation.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Thank you all.

I know we've been, again, playing musical chairs with Parks and SPU.

Really appreciate you all taking the time to come back.

And I know we're doing our technical thing.

But looking forward to hearing about this.

And I guess I'll tell a dad joke.

What did the Pacific Ocean say to the Atlantic Ocean?

What?

Nothing.

It just waved.

That was probably the best one.

Thank you.

That was so good.

Come on.

All right.

Thank you, Seattle Parks.

And we also have central staff.

Go ahead and present yourself for the record and we'll jump right in.

SPEAKER_05

Great.

Thank you.

I'm Christopher Williams, Chief of Staff, Seattle Parks.

SPEAKER_01

I'm Lee Sward, Seattle Parks Property Management Interagency Advisor.

And Tracy Rass of Council Central Staff.

SPEAKER_05

And maybe I'll kick this off.

So we're actually at the end of what has been an 18-month process to apply for the grant, to negotiate a deal on the property.

And today we're here because we actually received the grant award and need authorization to accept the grant.

Thank you for considering these amendments to the City of Seattle's interlocal agreement with King County that governs the conservation futures levy, commonly referred to as CFT, which is the city's primary source of matching funds for land acquisition and We provided you with a memo that provides background information on this legislation, which is attached to today's agenda.

We also have provided staff level briefings to some of your offices.

This has been a great partnership for the city of Seattle for more than 30 years.

leading to the acquisition of more than 150 acres of land plus 2,000 sites all over Seattle.

In today's legislation, you will see some sites in the South End.

The CFT is currently helping the city by land in Bitter Lake, Queen Anne, and other areas throughout the city.

Today's legislation is the final stage of an application process that began 18 months ago.

when we at Seattle Parks and Recreation looked at our gap analysis, which urban villages are lacking and nearby parks are open spaces.

We are asking you for the authority to accept grants that have already been approved by the King County Council.

While the legislation may seem wonky, with various amendments to recent interlocal agreements that was adopted to codify a partnership with the city, the city has had with The CDA has had this agreement with King County for more than 30 years.

It is really quite simple.

Passing this legislation today allows us to accept money from King County, which they've already approved for these projects.

So thank you for your consideration today.

And we brought Lise Ward along, our capable subject matter expert on property acquisitions.

SPEAKER_01

Council members, first a brief primer on conservation futures levy.

The King County Conservation Futures Levy is a county-wide property tax levy assessment.

Every parcel in King County that is taxed for property taxes has the little thing on the bottom of the invoice is for assessments, noxious weeds, surface water management, and conservation.

So the conservation...

is the conservation futures levy tax.

And even the parks department or other city departments have to pay this assessment.

So city property is exempt from property taxes, but everybody pays the assessment.

The county manages the funds and there's an annual grant opportunity for people to apply for conservation funds for acquisition.

under the auspices of this levy.

The intent of Conservation Futures is to preserve natural areas and preserve passive park activities.

As such, the funding cannot be used for acquisition of land that would ultimately be developed with ball fields, courts, off-leash dog areas.

And in fact, one of the grant conditions is that subsequent development limit impervious surface to 15%.

So the intent is to try to keep the green green.

The city's used this funding source for land acquisition to leverage various levies and bond issues since 1990. And we've received over $112 million in grants which supported over 200 acquisitions.

And the result was over 150 acres have been added to the park system using this money.

now a primer on the interlocal agreement.

For years, we operated under one interlocal agreement between King County and the city, and each time a grant round was completed, there was an amendment to the interlocal agreement.

So they started out with A, B, C, D, et cetera, went through the entire alphabet, went to A, A, B, B, C, C. The interlocal agreement template was recently updated.

And so now amendments are just numerically numbered.

So the first amendment was, we ran the first amendment through last year.

Now we're at amendments two, three, and four.

A typical grant cycle is over a year.

Applications are due every February.

Now, this legislation concerns the February 2023 grant round.

I may, hopefully I won't confuse this with 2024, but I'm putting myself back in 23. We submitted in February the Citizens Oversight Committee that makes recommendations to the King County Executive and the Council does a lot of work.

City of Seattle, other suburban cities, and Incorporated King County are eligible to apply for this money.

And after the applications are submitted, this volunteer open space citizens committee reviews every single application, sits through evening meetings whereby each agency presents their project, and goes out to look at every single parcel that's nominated for acquisition.

So they do a lot of work in that March, April time period.

Deliberations, and this is where I'm fuzzy because I'm not with the county, but their deliberations, spring, summer, And then at the end of the summer, typically in August, the committee submits written recommendation report to the King County Executive for funding recommendations based on the grants received and how they best meet grant criteria.

King County Council approves the grants and appropriates the funds from the county end, generally during their budget process in November.

And once the King County Council passes their legislation, we're free to pass our legislation to essentially seek approval for amendments to the standing interlocal agreement between King County and city of Seattle.

So hopefully that wasn't too much data in a short period of time.

So fast forwarding to the proposed legislation, we are seeking council approval to amend the interlocal agreement with amendments two, three, and four.

They each have slightly different purposes.

So Amendment 2 reflects the fact that grants are awarded based on estimates many times.

So some real estate deals end up under budget or they don't happen because the willing seller goes away.

this money can only be used for willing deals, cannot be used for condemnation.

So unused grant monies go into a common pot, and then every year right about the time that these applications are submitted, jurisdictions can apply for increments of this money that's thrown into the allocation pot.

for existing projects that have been previously approved for grants.

Maybe the appraisals came in higher or maybe the scope was expanded to include the property next door.

The agency needs more money and they make a request.

So included in that report that goes to the King County Executive are also recommendations for reallocations of this funding.

Amendment three was requested by King County and they're making slight tweaks to the existing interlocal agreement All of them, from Parks' perspective, all of them are good.

They added a category for funding called site stabilization costs.

Sometimes when we expand green belts, we buy private inholdings with a house that are right smack in the middle of a green belt.

And in the past, we've demolished these houses, restored the site.

incorporated the site into the overall greenbelt, that didn't used to be reimbursed by the grant.

And so after all these years, the counties finally realized that site stabilization costs are a good thing, and they've added it to the categories of items that can be reimbursed under the grant.

Cash match used to be 50%.

So if you want $100, you gotta...

spend $100 on this acquisition project, they've reduced the match to 25%, which is a real help.

And I'm a little bit more fuzzy on this third item.

Occasionally, agencies perhaps exceed the 15% impervious surface limit, which throws the the grant area out of compliance with grant conditions in the past.

A way to cure that was to either replace with land or replace with cash.

And they changed the language to include an and or both.

So there could be a combination of land and cash that could cure.

some sort of non-compliance issue.

So that's what Amendment 3 is about.

And Amendment 4 actually represents the awards of the grants for which applications were submitted in 2023. For the Parks Department, that total was $4,922,500.

You'll see in the table there's a larger amount and that's because the ILAs between King County and the city, the mayor signs it, other departments are able to apply for these grants as well.

You'll understand when to get to the table here.

So there's a table, left hand column is the council district.

In this particular round, we just got a lot of grants in districts one and two.

It changes year by year.

I would say overall through the extent of our involvement with King County on this program, the city's been well served by this money in all districts of the city.

So for reallocation, which is Amendment 2, we got reallocations for two projects.

The Longfellow Creek project is an assemblage of four houses along a stretch of Longfellow Creek that's ripe for riparian restoration.

And we're buying these houses one at a time, and as we buy each house, we request increments of money to help fund these acquisitions.

North Rainier Town Center is the old UW laundry site, across from Franklin High School near the link station off of Rainier Avenue South.

We're working with the office.

It's a multi-department, multi-year project.

We're working with Office of Housing to build affordable housing there by the transit station.

UW is also a partner for a future child care center.

And we've been kind of standing by because OH has had to go through a process to secure a developer.

And we've been assembling money.

And as property values have risen, we've gone back occasionally to King County to kind of bump up.

our pool of money for future acquisition.

The grant application looks at properties outside of the immediate housing site, but now that OH has secured a developer, it's possible there may be a park somewhere on the site.

So that project will move forward eventually.

The amendment for allocation for the applications that were submitted is broken in two between Seattle Parks acquisitions and SPU acquisitions.

We both applied for grants in the same year.

So we have a park called Hitz Hill Park.

And the Hitz family still owns property around the park, and we were approached by the Hitz family to add to the park.

So they're a willing seller there, so we applied for a grant to be able to work out that process.

And the second project is Rainier Beach Residential.

urban village park, within the park and open space plan, there were a number of gap areas identified within urban villages where there is no park within five minute walking distance of someone's home.

So we're trying to fill that orange with green, and we've started an acquisition project to identify parcels.

to fill that orange gap and we started out with a million dollar request likely to go back for reallocation once we identify a site and get a final appraised value for that.

And then lastly, there's the Helen Sherry property.

Brent talked about having been successful at obtaining grants, and they got money from CFT.

So it's kind of fun to have one property transaction be represented two times in the same committee meeting.

And Thornton Confluence Natural Area Expansion, I don't know much about it, but I do know it's near Meadowbrook Pond.

Oops, did I go backwards?

Yeah, I did.

So this is the time for questions.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome, and I know that we have Tracy from our phenomenal central staff.

Would love to pass it off to you, my friend.

SPEAKER_23

I have no comments.

The legislation is in good order.

They would be requesting a vote today, again, because we won't have any more committee meetings for the rest of the year, and they want to get on with their work with the money.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Well, thank you.

Colleagues, definitely want to pause to see if anyone has any questions about this at all?

No?

Okay.

Council Member Kettle.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Mr. Williams and Ms. Ward.

One question I had, and I was going to ask it last time, the last agenda item before our SPU folks left, was...

you know, the coordination that may exist or may not exist between the various departments.

And so for, as it turned out, today I had a meeting with OSC and the Urban Forestry Commission, the Office of the Sustainability Environment, and then the Urban Forestry Commission.

And obviously they have their goals.

I see what's happening with SPU in this meeting, along with parks.

And then you think about canopy and all these kinds of questions.

So I was just curious about, any cross-coordination, or is it kind of based on, like the SPU with the water, you know, with the creek and so forth, that kind of drives that, but is there any cross-coordination?

Does it come together in one place, or is it kind of based on each department's kind of focus?

In the case of, like, the water management, if you will, or in your case, parks themselves, and then OSC's got, like, this overarching kind of responsibility.

I was just curious, since we don't live in the executive and being relatively new to city government, how that was coming together, if it does.

SPEAKER_01

I have been contacted by the canopy folks, so I fully expect there may be a request to coordinate on some of those future protection of tree canopy types of applications that may or may not necessarily directly be in an existing greenbelt, for example.

Our mission at Parks is to fill those orange areas with green in urban park settings and also to fill in private inholdings in existing green belts so they do lend themselves to restoration efforts.

On the Longfellow Creek project that I just described, we're purchasing the four houses.

We are in discussions with SPU because they are very interested in assembling the property in order to perform a riparian restoration there, because the creek kind of is straight, and the restoration would make it a little more windy, which is more indicative of a natural creek.

So there is some coordination there.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I would just add to that that we have a long history working with our partners at SPU on property acquisition and shared uses.

You could almost go all over the city and look at locations where there's an adjacency.

We tend to take an opportunistic approach as a lot of the land acquisition has to be acquired fee title, so there is no free land in the city.

But there are lots of examples where we're working with Office of Housing in Lake City, in fact, is a great example of parks using park land to build affordable housing on that legislation to make that happen.

It's eventually going to come here.

So lots of examples.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you.

Since SBU, Chair, since SBU came to the table, would you like to add to that?

SPEAKER_07

Chris, can you hold the mic a little closer to your mouth?

SPEAKER_09

Sorry.

So, again, I'm Chris Horvath for the Drainage and Waste Water Line of Business at SPU, and we do have a shared position that coordinates projects where we try to advance our mutually aligned interests where we have capital projects that need to occur on parks properties.

So we do, you know, for tree canopy, that's just one part of it, right?

You know, parks has a lot of open space where it's beneficial for us to locate utilities.

And then I'm sure front representing water can talk about the shared interests like with the reservoir sites.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

Not a ton of coordination on part of the programming I'm doing out in the watershed or out in the Cedar River.

It's more inter-jurisdictional coordination.

People like Maple Valley and Renton out there.

But I also have the responsibility of maintaining and managing the right-of-way lands for our transmission corridor for the whole water system.

So that is basically narrow swaths, 60 to 100 foot swaths of land that we own from all the way out the watersheds to all the way into town.

And We do a lot of coordination with OSC and other folks in SPU to talk about canopy management and the environmental benefits and also some of the things like invasive weeds and garbage and things that appear on our corridors and our pipeline right away.

So we try and stay coordinated among a lot of departments on that stuff because it kind of acts like a park.

We also manage a an interlocal agreement with King County Parks for the recreational and passive recreational use of all that right away corridor for our pipeline right away.

SPEAKER_15

Excellent, thank you.

And thank you for coming to the table.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you and I know, just colleagues, I know that we have a packed agenda so I really appreciate you all and especially with a lot of property acquisitions from different departments so thank you all.

Thank you Seattle Parks and Seattle Public Utilities and our phenomenal central staff.

I'm gonna go ahead and move that we recommend passage of Council Bill 120843. Do I have a second?

SPEAKER_11

Second.

SPEAKER_08

Moved and seconded, and third and fourth.

And if there's no additional comments, clerk, will you please call the roll?

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Strauss?

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Kettle?

SPEAKER_08

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_08

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Five in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_08

Bill passes and it will be sent to September 17th, 2024 City Council meeting.

We're going to go ahead and thank you all for being here.

And I just want to thank our, we're going to go ahead and read agenda item number 10 into the record.

And yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_21

Agenda item number 10 is Council Bill 120860, an ordinance relating to the Seattle Center Department authorizing the Seattle Center Director to execute a third amendment to the lease agreement with Tilden Investments LLC for certain real property adjacent to Seattle Center at 621 2nd Avenue North, Seattle, Washington.

This is for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

And presenting today are Roseanne Lopez and Richard Benoit from Seattle Center.

SPEAKER_08

And I want to thank you all for being here and being so patient.

Last but not least, and I think we'll need some help with the presentation, but looking forward to this and then also the presentation from Seattle Center about Memorial Stadium as well.

So looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_02

Chair, just a point of clarification while they're setting up the PowerPoint.

We're going to talk about the item for vote first, then vote, then get Memorial Stadium?

SPEAKER_08

Correct.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, and colleagues, there's no vote on Memorial Stadium.

It's just a briefing.

I think that was an error on our end, so just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_18

Thank you, Chair.

Hi, good afternoon.

Thank you, Council Chair Hollingsworth and council members.

I'm very pleased to be here on behalf of Seattle Center with my colleague here, Richard Benoit.

My name is Roseanne Lopez and I'm the Director of Facilities Planning and Operations at Seattle Center.

We are here today to present and review a lease renewal amendment for a building called the Color Craft Building just adjacent on the north side of the Seattle Center campus.

For context, I wanted to provide some information regarding Seattle Center.

where we host over 10 million visitors each year with thousands of events and cultural programs.

This building is used for warehouse trades and shop spaces for our carpenters, electricians, painters, plumbers, and metal fabricators that work very hard and very diligently to ensure that we have a campus for all to enjoy in our community, as well as emergency response for shelter for extreme heat and cold and other uses by our community.

This legislation approves a lease renewal for continued use by Seattle Center of the Colorcraft building that's located at 621 2nd Avenue North, just north of the Seattle Center campus.

And again, it will be used for warehouse trades and office space for our team.

In addition to the market rent increase that's noted in this lease amendment, it also allows for Seattle Center to have two additional lease renewal options that are three years each.

And the significance of this is that as in parallel there is work for the design of the new and exciting Memorial Stadium, our goal would be to relocate our trade staff into Memorial Stadium upon its completion.

In preparation and in analysis of this, we completed and engaged with CBRE to look at a market analysis of eight properties of similar properties in the area to ensure and verify that the base rate that's being requested aligns with similar properties that would be considered.

Seattle Center hosts 30 resident organizations.

And again, this space is very critical to the day to day operations of 24 seven operations of the Seattle campus.

Yeah.

For summary background on the Colorcraft building, it's a 30,720 square foot industrial flex space used for mixed warehouse and office space.

It is owned by Tilden Investment LLC, which is a lessor.

It is a two-level space.

The first level has metal fabrication shops, electrical...

carpenter, and paint shops.

And the second space includes office space and industrial flex space that's used by Cornish College of the Arts that supports their scene shop operations there as well.

And this is a aerial view of the space of the color craft building.

As you'll see, it's just north of Mercer and the north side of our campus.

SPEAKER_22

Thank you, Rosanne.

Thank you, council.

Thank you, chair, council members.

As you can see by the building lease summary, pretty much Rosanne explained it all, but it's a lease commencement was July 17th of 2000. The initial term had expired July 31st of 2010. AT THAT POINT, THREE FIVE-YEAR EXTENSIONS WERE AGREED UPON, AND THAT LEASE EXTENSION, FINAL LEASE EXTENSION EXPIRES NEXT JULY 31ST OF 2025. THAT'S WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT NOW THAT WE EXTEND THIS LEASE AS WE HAVE TO GIVE NOTICE IF NOT, SO IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT FOR US.

AND AS YOU CAN SEE BY THE PREVIOUS PAGE THAT ONE BLOCK NORTH OF CAMPUS IS IMPERATIVE.

The current rent is $47,487.72, which is $1.55 a square foot, which aligns with the CBRE evaluation analysis.

The lease structure is triple net, so we do own the taxes, the insurance, and everything that's involved in the triple net for the building.

And then the rent increases are based on the CPI annual every year.

Seattle Center is responsible for the operating expense.

And then the Third Amendment, would add two three-year options through July 31st, 2031. We're hoping that the first extension would be the only one needed if the Memorial Stadium is completed at that time, and then our operations could move to the lower portion of the Memorial Stadium once completed.

The following pages are a few photos of where we sit on that north of the campus.

This is the entrance, and then the garage bays that serve Where we store and all our trades sit.

This is the color craft shop spaces that we sublease out to the Cornish.

I may have missed a page.

Give me one second.

This is still color craft as well.

And then I think the final page will be This is our space.

This is where we have computers for our employees to use.

They can do their time cards.

And then the space next to that is the electrical space.

That's what we have.

Questions?

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, I have a couple questions, but I'll love to pass off to my colleagues and just recognize if they have any.

Thank you all for the present.

Let me first start off.

Thank you all for the presentation.

And then wanted to pause to see if any of my colleagues have any questions before I ask like one or two are mine.

Yes, Council Member Rivera.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here.

So we subleased part of this building to Cornish?

How much of the building?

SPEAKER_22

About 6,500 square feet of the 30,000.

Of the 30,000, okay.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

And then I noted that I don't know the terms of the original lease, but it looks like this is almost a 23% increase in four years for the rent, which seems really high to me.

So can you talk a little bit about the initial...

lease agreement and how you came to the terms and I'm just worried about over and you know, and also whether is there no space at Seattle Center that we own that we could use?

I assume not or we wouldn't be leasing the space but I just would love to hear more about this because over the course of this lease, this is a lot for the city to take on and given that the Cornish space is so small, we are assuming the bulk of that costs.

SPEAKER_18

That's correct.

The lease began in year 2000. The cost of that initial rate was $18,500 per month.

The annual change or increase is based on the consumer price index or CPI.

It has a cap of 5% per year.

I assessed the CPI over the last 20 years.

It went all the way up to eight.

There was one year it went to negative 0.4%.

but the cap on that is 5%.

We also looked at CBRE, or Seattle Center Engaged CBRE, so we could ensure that the cost that we were paying aligned with what the market rate was in the area for Lower Queen Anne.

It showed that we're paying $1.55, $1.55 per square foot.

The assessment from CBRE said that It would probably lease out at $1.60.

So we were paying 3% lower than market rate in that area.

In order to be prudent, we also looked at eight properties that could house similar activity in and around the area, both in Inner Bay, Soto, other parts of Seattle.

What's very unique about Seattle Center and its 74 acres is that all of the activity for the campus is right there.

And what, you know, we looked throughout our campus and at 74 acres, we do not have space, you know, to houses and with the electricians, the carpenters and others, there's very specialized uses of ventilation and spaces where we fix our golf carts and things too.

So we wanted to be prudent and be good stewards of Seattle Center and the monies, but we did not have space on campus.

That upstairs 6,500 square feet of the 30,000 is more of like a shop-ish space.

We're predominantly using the downstairs portion.

And because of the unique needs of Seattle Center and our technical facilities management group, we looked at what we've also been doing to invest and retrofit it for the uses and the needs.

And we've invested $700,000 over 15 years.

But we're very excited with the opportunity and the partnership with Memorial Stadium so that we can be back on campus and house our staff on campus and also be good stewards of the funds as well.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Rosanne.

That's really helpful and it's part of our job is to make sure that we understand where these things are really show to the public our work and be transparent about how we enter into these agreements and what it really is.

And it's great to see you've looked at other alternatives and what market rate is around and that this is actually lower than what is considered market rate in that area.

So all of that is really important to show to the public.

So appreciate the information.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Any other colleagues?

SPEAKER_08

No?

That was actually one of my questions was about how much space do we sublease as well.

And then just to clarify, once Memorial Stadium's complete, a lot of those operations will be moved into Memorial Stadium.

SPEAKER_22

Yeah, all the operations are there.

We're working with Generator Studio right now to design that space in Memorial Stadium for those trades to move in there.

Oh, that's great.

That's great.

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_18

And I think, too, when we looked at other options, we also looked at city properties that we could utilize.

And we did not identify that also with, you know, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that was invested to make it fit for purpose for the needs of our residents.

Operational and trade staff, you know, we looked at that and with the thousands of events, you know We have all of our materials and supplies there across the street a lot of our staff utilize golf carts or you know to get around campus in addition to vehicles and so it's the proximity as you know as you've Experienced the wonder and you know how wonderful Seattle Center is when we have thousands of people with programs and events We have to be able to react quickly because we do operate a 24-7 facility

SPEAKER_22

No, absolutely.

Yeah, it's 24-7 all in-house too.

We manage most of our work for those events in-house.

SPEAKER_18

But the building is utilized seven days a week.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, for sure.

We've made TI improvements that have cost us over time that we would lose if we move buildings anyway.

We might have to retrofit a different building for the same purpose.

So that's helpful to know as well.

And my calculation was based on 2024 through 2028, not yearly.

So wanted to just say my math was correct, but.

Yeah, no worries.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08

No, and we know that Seattle Center, you all do a phenomenal job with the events and the logistics.

And I'm glad to hear you have golf carts because Director Foster did not offer a golf cart when he dragged me around campus.

No, I'm just fine.

So I just wanna, just highlighting that.

But no, thank you all for the presentation and the clarification.

Any other colleagues?

Nope.

All right.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and move the passage of Council Bill 120860. Is there a second?

Second.

So move and second.

And clerk, would you please call the roll for this bill?

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

SPEAKER_14

Yes.

SPEAKER_21

Council Member Kettle.

SPEAKER_14

Aye.

SPEAKER_21

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Motion carries.

This will be sent to September 17th, 2024. Thank you, Seattle Center.

Thank you for being here.

Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_18

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

Agenda item number 11 into the records.

SPEAKER_21

Number 11 is a Memorial Stadium introductory presentation for briefing and discussion.

Presenting today are Director Marshall Foster and David Kunzelman from the Seattle Center and Rob Johnson from One Roof.

SPEAKER_08

Awesome.

And I know Director Foster is getting set.

Do I say your name, Mr. Benoit?

Is that your last name?

Benoit.

Okay.

I'm going to remember that.

Thank you.

And I know it's...

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_99

99.

SPEAKER_08

What a blessing.

That's amazing.

Hundreds right around the corner.

I love it.

And she's an option.

I submitted my grandmother to be on the Smuckers thing for today's show.

She didn't get on, but I still made a nice little fake one for her.

So she loved it.

It was a strawberry jam.

Okay.

Would you please introduce yourself for the record and we'll get it started.

SPEAKER_13

All right.

Marshall Foster, director of Seattle Center.

SPEAKER_17

David Kunzman, Memorial Stadium Director, Seattle Center.

SPEAKER_19

Rob Johnson, the One Roof Stadium Partnership, which is the Seattle Kraken, the Climate Pledge Arena, and OGD4.

SPEAKER_08

Yay.

And we love former council member Rob Johnson.

We thank you for being here and looking forward to the presentation.

We're really excited about Memorial Stadium, so give us the 411.

SPEAKER_13

all right thank you chair Hollingsworth and committee members it's great to be with you all we know we're the last item on your agenda so we're going to keep this crisp but we're very excited to be here with you as you know we have been many years in developing a partnership between the Seattle school district the city of Seattle and an external partner which is now established and known as part of that that three-legged partnership the one roof stadium partnership We have been hard at work over the last few months negotiating, based on the RFP process that we did last year, a proposed development agreement and interlocal agreement between the parties, which will allow us to move forward with this incredible project.

Just a couple of key elements.

Why does this matter to Seattle Center?

Memorial Stadium is property owned by the school district.

Fundamentally, it has been part of the vision for the future of Seattle Center for many, many decades.

You know our Century 21 plan, the opportunity to turn that building into an asset that serves the campus, both for sports, but also for music and culture.

And I was kind of chuckling because it's great we did these two items together today.

The operations side of our campus very much needs that centralized operation tucked under the seats in Memorial Stadium.

So that's what you just saw moving that building from that building back to campus is an exciting element of it.

And then lastly, when we started this process, we knew we would find a partner.

What we didn't realize was we would find a community-based partner who would bring forward a nonprofit approach to how to build a community stadium at Seattle Center.

And that's one of the things that's very unique here.

This is not a profit-driven enterprise.

This is about creating a community stadium to serve students, to serve our community on campus.

So we're very excited to be able to walk you through how that's gonna look today.

And I'm going to turn it over to David.

SPEAKER_17

All right.

Well, thank you, Marshall, council members.

I think, again, our goal is to introduce our fine partner here, but also hit some of the high points and some of the key terms that we're working on in the relationship.

So we'll just go ahead and jump right in.

Just again, highlighting that this is a parcel within the campus that's owned by Seattle Public Schools.

I do want to note that it was deeded to the school district by the city back in 1946, and that deed requires that it remain as an athletic stadium.

Obviously, over the 77 years that structure has been there, it gives us great opportunity to make improvements at this point.

And as Marshall said, with this nonprofit relationship with our partner, we're already starting to see some great possibilities.

I JUST WANTED TO LIST SOME OF THE BACKGROUND HERE.

THIS IS BACKGROUND IN WHICH WE'VE BEEN WORKING WITH THE SCHOOL DISTRICT AGAIN FOR MANY YEARS AS THEY LOOKED FOR A SOLUTION, AS WE LOOKED FOR A SOLUTION.

SO JUST LIST SOME OF THE AGREEMENTS THAT WE'VE HAD WITH THEM AND ALSO SOME OF THE times we've been before this body and that the council has supported Memorial Stadium.

So thank you.

And we do appreciate that.

And we'll talk a little bit later about what will be next for us and when we'll be back to see you next time.

And again, we went through an RFP process.

It was quite a process, but important.

And Rob's going to talk a little bit about his organization.

But I just wanted to highlight again what we weren't expecting to end up with a not-for-profit partner.

It has really been a wonderful process.

It's been a very transparent process because of that.

And I think that all parties, including the school district, would agree that we're all able to get a better result out of that.

So I just want to underscore that important thing.

Pardon me.

All right.

And with that, I'll allow Mr. Johnson to present a little bit of your organization's roles.

SPEAKER_19

Thank you, David.

It's a real pleasure and a privilege to be working with the city and the school district to try to solve this problem that's persisted for more than 30 years as the local governments have tried to figure out a solution to revamp a much needed Memorial Stadium.

We responded to the RFP with intention of trying to augment the existing $110 million in public sector funding with additional private philanthropic funding and create a vision that with all three parties, the sum could be greater than what each could try to contribute on their own.

So we come to this with a real joy and a real vision to try to make this a home for the next generation of Seattle Public School students and beyond, who can see this as a place where they can not only thrive on the playing field, but also if you're an artist, if you're a musician, if you're involved in other extracurricular activities at school, whether you're interested in technology or the theater, that this is a place where every single student in the Seattle region can call home.

Our organization is proud to be working with some of the finest entities in the sports architecture and construction space.

We've worked with Generator Studios on several projects, most recently the Kraken Community Iceplex.

They're the lead architect on the project.

And we've entered into a relationship with one of Seattle's greatest contractual Selen Construction.

Selen has not only built some of the most iconic facilities in the city of Seattle, but has touched just about every single facility on the Seattle Center campus.

Their knowledge and wealth is a really hugely important benefit to the project itself.

The goal for us as an entity is to really live through the vision, which is to deliver a project that has no private profit associated with it.

Currently, our organization has been in kind in all of our resources, including the design time and the staff time associated with the last year plus of development.

And that we would, if the development agreement leads to an operating agreement, we would conceptually operate this facility at no cost to the public.

And if any revenues were to come from the operation of the facility, they would be sewed right back into funding programmatic and or reserve funding on behalf of the stadium itself.

Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_17

Um, just back to the facility itself and the building.

Um, of course we want to just note the history of, uh, the stadium.

And of course it's named after the Memorial wall that, uh, has a very prominent location at the east side of the site as council member kettle might agree it's not a very prominent condition at the moment and it affords us great opportunity to kind of bring that back to a position of importance it is adjacent to a school district owned parking lot and that will not change although We are working hard to make sure that the distance between the parking and the wall, in fact, does change, and we can give the proper space it deserves for people to visit and acknowledge the wall.

I'll note that we did go through a process with landmarks and the entire facility was old enough to be considered, but it's the memorial wall that was landmarked as part of that and that happened last October and we'll continue to work with landmarks.

on that particular element of the facility.

It's a little odd that we are also at the same time working with the Design Commission.

So we're working with both bodies.

The Landmarks Board has purview of the wall and a halo, if you will, around it of about 20 feet.

But we have been working with the Design Commission on the larger project.

They have purview of the Seattle Center campus and have been involved with our master plans over the year.

and are very much interested in the connections of this facility to the campus, the urban design, if you will.

We have been to the commission and received unanimous support for the conceptual design that was done in June of this year.

We, just last week, Had a subcommittee of the commission come to the campus, three commissioners who were interested in really understanding more of the relationship of the stadium to the fountain.

The International Fountain Mall, of course, is the heart of campus.

Really understanding what that design is going to start to look and feel like.

So that work will lead into our next meeting with that body where we'll bring schematic design to them on October 3rd next month.

I wanted to hit on funding a bit.

We have an assembly of funds here, starting with the Seattle School District.

They passed a levy that included $66.5 million for the project.

That money originally was intended to do what they could of a renovation of the facility, and the additional money that is noted here, of course, allows us to replace the whole facility.

We were lucky enough to receive a $4 million grant from the state, from the Department of Commerce, and the city has committed in various ways a total of $40 million toward the project.

Rob, do you want to speak to your fundraising?

SPEAKER_19

Sure.

I would say that the fundraising got started with our ownership group making a lead gift of a $5 million commitment.

And that's coming from a combination of both the team and the arena.

And we're well on our way towards our goal, which is an additional $20 million on top of that lead gift for $25 million total.

As we sit here today, we're sitting just about $23 million in pledges or cash on hand.

So we're feeling very strong about closing out the final contributions long before we get to the point where we're under construction.

SPEAKER_17

Thank you.

And so we wanted to speak to next steps.

It looks like our slide is somewhat truncated here on the screen.

But I want to highlight community engagement.

We've listed some of our stakeholders, some of the events that we have held.

I'll note one that we just concluded yesterday.

We have a stadium design advisory team.

which is really modeled after an approach that the school district takes, and it really is an opportunity to bring, from the school district's perspective, students into the conversation.

We took the opportunity, of course, to bring our resident organizations in, and it was a workshop that happened over a year three iterations, three hours each time, so considerable commitment of time for those who participated, but also a very rich opportunity to go pretty deep and hear people's interests and reactions toward the design of the facility.

Listed there are the two agreements that the parties are working hard on.

There's a development agreement which is between the city and One Roof about how the project will be developed and an interlocal agreement that is between the city and the school district and how the city will represent the school district in that development.

We are expecting to be able to transmit these implementing agreements to the council once we've concluded these negotiations.

And then the big question that everyone's asks, when will you start?

We are targeting demolition construction in July of next year.

And so the milestone there is that the school district would like to hold its 2025 graduations as they do in the facility.

Then it would be turned over to us.

And we have a goal then to be done with the project by the end of 2027. We expect construction to take about two years.

We do have a bookend on this of finishing the project at least by the end of 2027. And with that, we'll share an image and take your questions.

I do want to highlight one of the really exciting features of the design at this point, because that's the fun part.

And if you look at the salmon color here that you would see on the south and the west side of the facility, If you imagine the site as you know it with the large walls that surround the stadium, those walls will come down.

It will become much more transparent and integrate visually with the campus.

But the fence lines for the future facility on the south and west will move inward, which will basically feel like an additional acre of public space on the campus.

So that will be a space that will be programmed to serve events at the stadium, serve events that happen at Seattle Center, and also just be available for passive space for people who are using Seattle Center on a day-to-day basis.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you so much.

Very excited, obviously, about Memorial Stadium.

So thank you, David, Rob, D4, and Director Foster.

I know we have some questions.

I had a couple, but Councilmember Strauss, and then we'll go to Councilmember Kettle.

SPEAKER_07

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to be brief.

Director Foster, allow the record to reflect.

This is the second meeting in a row that you've brought a former councilmember to the table.

SPEAKER_13

It's a strategy.

SPEAKER_07

but it's regarding Seattle Center, and I know Council Member Kettle's likely gonna get into this, but Seattle Center is the heart of our city, and it's demonstrated by former civic-minded people still being engaged.

If we could go back to slide four, I'm gonna then go to slide eight and then to slide nine.

I'm gonna talk about timeline funding and passing legislation, and I'm gonna do so as fast as possible, Chair, with all due respect to everyone else.

My slide numbers must be off.

The one with the 2017 timeline is the start date.

SPEAKER_13

The background with when we started?

SPEAKER_19

You're back at the beginning, David.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_19

It's your timeline, it's not...

SPEAKER_07

There you go, right there.

So November 17th was when I was hired here at the Seattle City Council as staff.

This was one of the first projects that I worked on.

And I just bring this up because I remember there was about six to eight years worth of work before I got here that wasn't highlighted on this, as well as there were about three different steps that took place between November 17th and October 2021. Colleagues, I highlight that for you because the amount of work that has gone into getting us to where we are today is more than is represented on this sheet.

I think it might be helpful for colleagues to, maybe not, but there's been a decade of work to get us to where we are today.

where we are today can't be fuddled or fiddled with unnecessarily is the point that I'm making.

If we could go on to slide eight regarding the funding, I just want to highlight the fact that the City of Seattle has contributed funds to this project.

You can see Councilmember Kettle, I'm still your staff member on this project apparently because I fell in love with this project when I started as staff for Sally Bagshaw.

The TBD philanthropic funding, I'm not going to ask you what that number is, but I've heard good projections.

SPEAKER_19

For the record, I did share earlier, Council Member Strauss, $23 million towards a $25 million goal.

SPEAKER_07

I must have just gotten so wrapped up in my thoughts.

I know we had talked about that, but I didn't want to say it on the record without your permission.

Colleagues, we have provided $21 million in capital improvement money, and then we have...

committed $19 million.

So I just want everyone to see, hear, acknowledge, and recognize that the previous city councils, not any singular previous council, but multiple have committed to this funding.

It's something that I am committed to, want that for the record.

If you could go to slide nine and then I'll be done, Chair.

which is, it's a little bit hard to read.

There's more beyond the development agreement, interlocal agreement, and all of this.

With the school district, we have a relationship with, and it's important that we're both able to pass the interlocal agreement in both bodies.

I worry that if we don't do so carefully that something could unravel.

Maybe I shouldn't be saying this on the record, but if you have concerns or conditions that you'd like to add to it, I really ask that you work with the team sooner than later because I don't want, I would like to pass these.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

And I see Council Member Kettle.

You are recognized.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

As the gentlemen at the table know, I guess somewhat like my colleague, I've been on the inside of this in a lot of ways.

And so I just wanted to recognize a few things.

One, I got involved in this as a community member, Queen Anne, but then also as a veteran in VFW Post, Ballard Eagleson, VFW Post 3063. just before the school levy, not too long before the school levy.

And a friend of mine also who was civically minded, Anno O'Day, a football player who had played it there, we took a tour of ourselves, just us two walking about.

And the stadium was in terrible condition.

And you could see all the different pieces of it, you know, the antiquated and outdated and all the above.

And it was just in poor, poor shape.

And it will be until it's done.

And then we walked to the memorial wall And I will be blunt, it was shocking what in poor condition the memorial wall was.

And on top of that, the trash and everything else.

And so that was the start.

And so I engaged with Director Foster, your predecessor.

By the way, when I started this, little did I know that I'd be sitting here today engaging on this from this perspective.

But Director Needham, the mayor's office and the Seattle School District, particularly the athletic department, And I just wanted to publicly thank first Seattle School District and particularly the athletic department because they understood in terms of the trash and everything else that was going on.

They recognized the design flaws and how it kind of got to where it is today, but they cleaned it up.

And so I want to publicly thank the school district for their work.

And they've been continuing to do that because I go down there periodically.

And, and I just want to thank them, I also want to thank the mayor's office that I engage with again, this was at this point more with my vfw hat on versus Community Council.

And and and Seattle Center because they've been fantastic this whole time working through this and i've seen multiple versions of this briefing and you know i've always been.

impressed by the designs, and then the idea of opening it up and creating sight lines lighter, connecting back into Seattle Center to the fountain and the like, and just integrate it into the neighboring community, and particularly Seattle Center.

And I really appreciate all that engagement that I received in my former life from the city itself.

And then I really also want to thank...

One Roof, because I've met with Kraken, Climate Pledge Arena.

If you haven't received the Rob Johnson tour of Climate Pledge Arena, by the way, you need to get it.

It's the best tour of the arena that you can get.

And look forward to a few future ones as well.

And so I'm really impressed with the One Roof Foundation and the work and the effort and the collaboration.

And I think this is one Seattle defined in a lot of ways because it's not just internal to city government, but it's broader than that.

And I really want to thank all three entities for your involvement or the inclusion of the veteran community.

It's vital to have the veteran community because of the Memorial Wall piece to that.

We have to get that right.

I spoke to Landmark Commission, I testified last year and And the wall is it.

I know there was people who wanted to make the stadium an entire memorial, and obviously that was not.

I'm really appreciative of the Landmark Commission and their decision in terms of landmarking just the memorial wall.

So that's an additional entity, an additional thank you.

And I think all this really sets the stage to press forward.

Mr. Johnson, in terms of what you're saying, in terms of the fundraising, it shows even a broader community's commitment And I think to council member Strauss's point, we just need to keep the press on and press through the tape.

Because I know things have slid a little bit timeline wise, but we just got to press through the tape.

And if there's any hesitation or if there's any kind of hiccup, please do not hesitate to let my chair know.

But definitely include me on that because I'll definitely be engaged.

I'm somewhat thinking in terms of my VFW veteran hat, but now as the District 7 representative in which this lies, you know, definitely want to engage.

So thank you so much for that.

SPEAKER_08

Council President Nelson.

SPEAKER_20

Just thank you for giving us this briefing, especially going into budget.

Last year, I believe that there were $40 million that were allocated to this project.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Then the REIT funding came in far lower than we thought it would when the projected budget was made, so we could only do 21%.

In any case, there have been that I am committed to seeing the future of this project forward.

And I really wanted to say that with the crack in one roof climate pledge, working with the city and also with the school district, there was, you know, it might be, I don't know what the original timeline was, and...

But I will say that those relationships and that trust that took many months, years to forge is really going to be the foundation for this successful project because it's been such a long time that the city's been trying to work with the school district.

And so I do think that I just want to extend a thank you for all the party's work and also the fact that it is a...

a nonprofit that is working on behalf of all the entities at the table, I think really does go a long way.

So I appreciate everybody pulling together.

So thanks.

SPEAKER_08

Thank you for those words, Council President.

I was just writing about all the groups that are involved in this project, and it's a lot.

I'll be super brief in my comments.

I've had the wonderful opportunity of interning at the Seattle Public Schools down there.

They have a parking, they have a, I guess it's a trailer in a parking lot and that was when I was interning for the athletic director at the time was Al Harrison and so I had he used to be the coach at Garfield but that's where I did my internship and Friday night I was responsible for helping the teams at Memorial Stadium way back when when I was getting my master's at UW for in a collegiate athletic leadership because I thought I wanted to be a basketball coach and then parents ran me away but um They didn't run me away, but you know how parents are.

Everyone's an NBA player.

But the biggest piece of this that I want to highlight, which I'm really, really excited about, is for us to show our Seattle Public School athletes how much we care about them and invest in them and how they're going to have this facility and be able to play, whether it's lacrosse, soccer, football, all these cool things.

And and how much it's gonna mean to them, because usually they would talk about how cool the Eastside schools were, or how cool the Skyline was, or Eastside Catholic, or all these other places, so they get to see this, you know, we get to have this home for our Seattle public school kids, so really excited about that piece.

Council President, is your hand still up, or is it?

It's just, no, no, no worries.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anyone.

Awesome.

Thank you all for this.

Looking forward to the next steps.

And I know that now we're going to be working with our school district and all the hands that come into play.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for coming and presenting.

This was really super helpful.

With that, thank you, everyone.

Are there any other items that need to be discussed for business today?

Seeing none, this concludes September 11th, 2024 meeting of Parks, Public Utilities and Technology.

Due to the upcoming budget deliberations that are September through November, our next committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, December 11th at 2 p.m.

If there's no further business, this meeting will be adjourned.

Hearing none, it is 4.14 p.m.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.