Seattle City Council 11/29/21

The November 29th, 2021 meeting of the Seattle City Council will come to order.

It's 2.01 PM.

I'm Lorena Gonzalez, President of the Council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Herbold?

Here.

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson?

Present.

Sawant?

Sawant.

Present.

Thank you.

And Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Eight present.

Thank you so much.

Presentations.

I'm not aware of any presentations for today, so we'll move to approval of the minutes.

There are no minutes for approval today.

So we'll move to approval of the introduction and referral calendar.

If there's no objection, the introduction and referral calendar will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the introduction and referral calendar is adopted.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Move now to public comment.

Colleagues, at this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on the city council agenda, introduction and referral calendar, and the council's work program.

I want to thank everyone for their ongoing patience and cooperation as we continue to operate this remote public comment system.

It does remain our strong intent to have remote public comment regularly included on our meeting agendas.

However, as a reminder, the city council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is no longer suitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and effectively.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for today is 20 minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

Speakers will be called on in the order in which they registered to provide public comment on the council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number used for this registration and using the meeting phone number ID and passcode that was mailed to them upon confirmation.

This is different than the general meeting listen line call in information.

Again, I'll call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they pre-registered on the council's website.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but would like to, you can still sign up before the end of public comment by going to council's website at seattle.gov forward slash council.

Public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call your name, staff will unmute your microphone and you will hear a prompt if you have been unmuted.

This will be your cue to press star six before you begin speaking.

Please start by stating your name, the item that you are addressing, and as a reminder, your comment should relate to an item on today's agenda, the introduction referral calendar, or the council support program.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of your two minutes.

Once you hear the chime, please begin wrapping up your public comment.

If you do not end your comments at the end of the two minutes provided, your microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

If your microphone is muted, you can always email us the rest of your public comment at council, that's c-o-u-n-c-i-l at seattle.gov.

Once you are done with your public comments, please disconnect from the line and you can continue to follow this meeting on Seattle Channel or one of the listening options listed on the agenda.

Public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Again, please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt if you have been unmuted.

The first speaker is Howard Gale, followed by David Haynes.

Good afternoon.

Howard Gale, District 7, speaking on our failed police accountability system.

These are all the cities that have recently created new police oversight structures, not reform, but actual accountability structures post-George Floyd.

Newark, New Jersey, Nashville, Tennessee, in California, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Sonoma County, and San Jose, Portland, Oregon, Phoenix, Arizona, Atlanta, Georgia, in Ohio, Columbus, and Cleveland.

Houston and Kyle, Texas, Denver, Colorado, Salt Lake City, Utah, Honolulu, Hawaii, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

Yet in Seattle, not only have we have we have failed to advance accountability post-George Floyd, we have actually gone backwards.

Over the last three months, we have learned from five investigations published in the South Seattle Emerald and an investigation by KUW that the director of the OPA, whose entire career has been spent defending police and who was engaged in professional misconduct when he was a city attorney, has committed gross malfeasance in investigating police abuse and clearly violated state laws regarding accessing and releasing medical information of a protester who was nearly killed in 2020. The OPA director has judged nearly 90% of last year's abuse cases against demonstrators to be without merit and found every SBD killing that he investigated to be lawful and proper.

We have learned that the OIG has allowed the routine certification of all of these aforementioned cases, flawed OPA investigations.

And this has been done by a person with a 23-year career at OIG who had a 23-year career as a police officer.

Fail to look at evidence.

Again, we are failing not only to advance police accountability, we've actually gone backwards.

And the Community Police Commission has failed to even investigate this.

Please, we need to have an oversight system that actually gives us community control over police.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next commenter is David Haynes.

And I have Lee Woods signed up, but showing up is not present.

So Lee, if you're listening, now's the time to call in.

If you show up as present, I will make sure to call on you.

David, welcome.

Hi, thank you.

My name is David Haynes, I live in District 7. I'm in Pioneer Square and every night there's evil predatory drug pushers and repeat offending criminals conducting an uncivil war with a bunch of psychotic, aggressive, panhandling drug addicts.

And anyway, they're keeping me awake for the last seven months and nobody's doing anything about it.

This city council work program and their government agencies and change teams have created the most racist, unsafe, inept, predatorily evil city in 21st century America.

You're basing your priorities on skin color and ethnicity and a past already overthrown, yet you're regurgitating hate and encouraging a fill-in-the-blank race war based on the past and the scorn caused by an immoral financial system distracting with skin color progressive use of percentages while refusing to judge people on the content of one's character.

You people are the biggest threat to first world Western civilization and innocent white citizens.

This city should be boycotted nationwide and globally out of principle for literally creating a racist, diseased society where a war on innocent, forsaken homeless are discriminated against and where black and brown drug pushers destroying lives daily, imploding Seattle and society, this did nonviolent misdemeanor, escalating violence, committing crimes against humanity with crack, meth, heroin and sex crimes.

all exempted from jail, while you finance a circumventing of the judicial system by prioritizing repeat offending criminals on a list created by criminal defense lawyers from the ACLU hiding within leave for a motel voucher, while purposely refusing to help innocent non-criminal white homeless citizens.

You're giving more public safety money to black community protesters and organizers, totally unqualified, untrustworthy, to help make communities safe.

More money than what you are investing in homeless shelters for the second winter of COVID and the seventh year of a homeless crisis.

Yet City Council redirects money away from solving the homeless crisis to BIPOC protesters, organizers, intimidating

Okay, that was our last caller, looking to see if there are any other callers in the waiting room, if IT can confirm that there are no additional callers.

There are no further public comment registrants.

Thank you so much, appreciate that.

So we'll go ahead and close out the period of public comment and move to other items of business on our agenda.

Excuse me, first up is payment of bills.

Will the clerk please read the title?

Council Bill 120234, an ordinance appropriating money to pay certain audited claims for the week of November 15th, 2021 through November 19th, 2021, and ordering the payment thereof.

Thank you so much.

I moved to pass Council Bill 120234. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded that Council Bill 120234, payment of the bills pass.

Are there any comments?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120-234, payment of the bills.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Yes.

And Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record.

The report of the City Council, agenda item one, Council Bill 120225, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department amending terms and conditions pertaining to the Emergency Bill Assistance Program and temporarily expanding access to assistance to certain eligible households for a limited time in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 emergency and amending section 21.49.042 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much.

I move to pass the council bill 120225. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

The bill has been moved and seconded.

Council Member Peterson, you are the sponsor of the bill, so I'm going to hand it over to you to address the item.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, as I mentioned at council briefing this morning, these next two council bills on the agenda will extend a key relief program for overdue utility bills for lower income households that are customers of Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities.

Seven months ago, on April 19th, the council approved enhancements to our local emergency assistance programs that lower the overdue utility bills for struggling low-income households.

Those enhancements were set to expire next month.

Due in part to the persistence of the COVID pandemic, these two bills would extend these program enhancements to the end of 2022. On today's agenda, the first item that we'll vote on is Council Bill 120225, which is for Seattle City Light.

The second item is Council Bill 120226 for Seattle Public Utilities.

Our City Council Central staff reviewed both bills and had no concerns.

Both utilities and I recommend passage of these bills for the emergency assistance programs.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson.

Are there any additional comments on Council Bill 120225, agenda item one?

Hearing no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120225, agenda item one.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Agenda item two, Council Bill 120226, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities Emergency Assistance Program Temporarily extending increased assistance related to COVID induced customer delinquencies and amending section 21.76.065 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much.

I move to pass Council Bill 120226. Is there a second?

Second.

Bill has been moved and seconded.

Council Member Peterson, I'm going to hand it back over to you as the sponsor of the bill.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, my comments on the previous item for Seattle City Light apply to this council bill, 120226, which is for the Seattle Public Utilities Emergency Assistance Program.

Two different utilities with two different sections of the Seattle Municipal Code require this separate bill.

But as with the first item, This Council Bill 120226 is extending to the end of 2022 the enhancements this Council put in place this past April for our Utilities Emergency Assistance Program.

Again, our City Council Central staff reviewed this bill, had no concerns.

Both the utility and I recommend passage of this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson.

Are there any additional comments on Council Bill 120226, Agenda Item 2?

Hearing no additional comments on agenda item two, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120226, agenda item two.

Are both?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

So want?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Agenda item three, council bill 120232, an ordinance relating to city employment, authorizing the execution of a collective bargaining agreement between the city of Seattle and Protect 17 Office of Emergency Management Unit to be effective through December 31st, 2021, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you so much.

I move to pass Council Bill 120232. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

The bill has been moved and seconded.

I am the sponsor of this bill, so I'll address it first and then happy to open up the floor to any additional comments on the bill.

Colleagues, as I described it during this morning's council briefing, Council Bill 120232 would ratify a collective bargaining agreement between the City of Seattle and Protech 17, Office of Emergency Management Bargaining Unit.

The agreement would cover approximately 13 positions in strategic advisor classifications and would be effective only through December 31st, 2021. The agreement is for a short duration because protect 17 unit is part of the coalition of city unions and will be a party to the proposed agreement with the coalition for 2022. The terms of the agreement would include provisions relating to wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions, including a retroactive 2021 wage adjustment of 2.9 percent, which is commensurate with the area wage increase included in the 2021 adopted budget for representative employees in the coalition.

The Labor Relations Policy Committee previously approved and considered and deliberated these parameters, and these parameters are consistent with the terms of this collective bargaining agreement.

And I recommend that you support the passage of Council Bill 120232. Are there any additional comments on Council Bill 120232, Agenda Item 3?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much.

I just want to say congratulations to members of protect 17 and use this as a chance to say how thankful I know we all are for the work that they've done over the last two years during this pandemic.

Very happy to see this tentative agreement in front of us.

Looking forward to voting for it.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any additional comments on agenda item three?

All right, hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120232, Agenda Item 3. Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Other business.

Colleagues, as I mentioned this morning, I need to move to be excused.

So if there is no objection, I will be excused from the full council meeting on Monday, December 6th, 2021. Hearing no objection, I'm excused from the council meeting on Monday, December 6th, 2021. Is there any further business to come before the council?

Hearing none, colleagues, this does conclude the items of business on today's agenda.

Our next regularly scheduled city council meeting is on December 6th, 2021 at two o'clock p.m.

I hope that you all have a wonderful afternoon.

We're adjourned.

Thanks so much.