We are on the air We are on the air and thank you for being here for a regular scheduled council briefing on May 6 I'll just go I'll start off and we just go around the room and talk about full council actions or this week's Report nothing up for vote today from the governance equity and technology committee.
We do have our meeting tomorrow morning at 930 and we're gonna have the digital equity progress report in addition to the sale information technologies and race and social justice initiative.
And I do want to mention along these lines, just give all of you a little nudge, a nudge for the respective departments that you're the policy lead on.
I believe the following annual RSGI department presentations have already taken place, and I could have missed one or two, but I know the Office of Sustainability and Environment presented at the Sustainability and Transportation Committee on May 5th, May 7th, and OPCD and SDCI presented at the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee on May 1st.
And Finance and Administrative Services presented at the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee on April 24th.
And on that one particularly, I don't want to show favoritism or anything, but I think Councilmember Bekshaw agreed that that was one of the most comprehensive and most effective reports by the team.
They're doing some very, they sort of set the bar sort of high on what a department can do in terms of policy direction, a granular approach, and then big picture items.
They were just well done.
And their numbers, they only had a couple of people on their change team.
They got it all the way from, my number's going to be off of like from, to 20 or something like that.
So kudos to that department and Calvin Goins.
So anyway, so we want to get that done before budget.
And we want to go as deep as we can on the respective departments such that they don't feel rushed during the budget process.
So just maybe get an email out to some of the departments.
We could get more than the three we've had.
On the introduction referral calendar today, we will be introducing a resolution we heard at the governance, equity, and technology committee We have a meeting tomorrow, April 21st, not on our meeting tomorrow.
And on that issue, we're looking at modifying the rules whenever there is behavior that can be construed as threatening in nature.
And our rules sort of address it now, but we didn't think adequately so.
And I want to thank a few of the council members for, again, having a discussion about this.
And we think the rules we're about to present certainly will May 21st, okay?
And last reminder is that at 11 o'clock we have a photo today with our new council members, so at 11 o'clock today we'll take our Seattle City Council photo.
Council Member Swann.
Thank you, President Harrell.
Good morning, everyone.
There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Human Services, Equitable Development, and Renter Sites Committee.
The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for its regular time, Tuesday, May 14th at 2 p.m.
At that meeting, we will discuss with the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections about their newly launched Renting in Seattle web portal.
I also wanted to report that my office hosted a really important community meeting at the Garfield Community Center on Thursday alongside the U.S.
Postal Service to discuss bringing a post office back to the Central District and addressing the post office desert that that entire part of the city is facing since the closure of the 23rd and Union Post Office.
We are fortunate that USPS appeared to be willing to open the post office.
They engaged with the community members very actively and have identified two or possibly three locations that could work as a temporary location or interim location.
And my office will be reporting more on that.
Thank you, Council Member Schwan.
Council Member Bekshaw.
Good morning, everybody.
I have a proclamation to circulate.
This came from our Human Services Department.
Our age-friendly Seattle is recognizing May as Older Americans Month, a term I keep saying that's just not the right term to be using, but we will be presenting this on Friday, not I will circulate this for your signature if you will join me in that.
Nothing today to vote.
I do want to acknowledge Councilmember Gonzalez, thank you and your staff for multiple days of conversation last week about having the low acuity presentation at your committee this week.
I know you are very busy, but I appreciate you doing that.
We will be canceling the Wednesday, May 8th meeting because we only had a couple of appointments.
But we will have the next meeting on Thursday, May 23rd.
And it's going to be a very full-packed agenda.
And I want to acknowledge also that later this month that I'm going to be at a conference that will be focusing on our retirement system.
So I'm going to be out of state for a few days.
And for anybody else who is interested in following up on our Seattle retirement system as chair of the finance committee, this is one of the responsibilities that comes with it.
And I'd love to share that with you.
So just bringing that to your attention because it is something that is really important to our current employees as well as retirees, and I've been chairing that committee now for a year and a half, and I've learned a great deal that I'd love to pass on to whoever might be interested.
Thank you, Council Member Akshaw.
Council Member Juarez.
Thank you.
I know I agree with you about that whole, what are they called?
Older Americans Monthly.
Yeah, the ARP keeps trying to send me a card, which I throw away every time I see it in the mail.
I refuse to take the ARP card.
That was a joke, you guys.
You're all joking.
You're all just staring at me.
When we get there, we'll probably feel the same way.
I started getting it when I turned 50, man, and they won't leave me alone.
I'm like, I'm not an elder.
Stop.
OK, so the Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee met last week.
And I want to take this time to thank Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Gonzalez.
particularly Council Member Bagshaw for chairing the meeting for me in my absence.
Thank you very much.
Thank you Council Member Gonzalez for attending and giving our staff some great direction on one of the items, one of the ordinances that we were attempting to, well, we will continue to review.
So thank you both.
The committee voted two ordinances for full council.
First of all, the appointment of Jesus Agare as superintendent of Parks and Recreation, which will be presented this afternoon, and an ordinance regarding a partnership between the Seattle Academy and the South Park Community Center, which will be presented at the following council meeting Monday, May 13th.
There's some things we will need to work out.
The Parks Department requested more time on this bill to follow up with council members and the community who had more questions about the agreement itself.
And I also want to thank Council Member Mosqueda who stepped up for me when I had to go home ill to welcome Council Member Pacheco.
So, thank you.
That's it.
Okay, Council Member Esqueda.
Good morning, Mr. President and colleagues.
Today, I'm circulating two proclamations.
The first one is the proclamation recognizing Beatrice Catherine Alder, or as folks may know, Bea.
We're recognizing and honoring the life of Beatrice Catherine Alder.
She died 36 hours after she was born due to medical issues, and Bea's parents, Aaron Alder and Rachel Alder, We were devastated in the middle of physical and emotional recovery.
When individuals have tough pregnancies, they often draw down sick leave.
And after the death of a loved one, our family leave policies don't contemplate what happens after the death of a loved one.
Many of you have taken care of your elders or a sick sibling, and our family leave policies don't consider that.
It's especially devastating when our leave policies don't consider the death of a child.
And what we're really looking forward to working on is honoring the today and the tireless advocacy of her parents, Erin and Rachel, who've been needing to, wanting and trying to bring forward policy change after a very long time.
We're really excited to learn last week that the executive is submitting policies to city council to help fix the gap in coverage that our state paid family leave medical act and our own leave act has not yet actually addressed with the leave policies and to find some remedies to this issue that Aaron and Rachel have faced.
We also know that Aaron and Rachel will be here with their family today as we honor Bea and we are really excited to be able to have this proclamation in front of us.
There will be more on that to come.
We also have...
Yes, thank you guys.
We also have a proclamation in recognition of Affordable Housing Week next week.
I'll be circulating that as well.
The proclamation is in recognition of Affordable Housing Week in 2019. This proclamation will designate May 13 through May 17 as Affordable Housing Week in Seattle.
This will be a week full of events, celebrations, and advocacy across dozens of cities in King County to ensure that everyone has access to a safe and healthy and affordable home.
We know that countywide, we need 156,000 affordable homes to meet the current need.
There are many partners in Seattle and across our region who are working tirelessly to create more resources and policies to help us create the affordable housing our community needs.
This is a week to celebrate and energize those efforts.
We will have affordable housing partners present this afternoon at full council meeting to accept the proclamation.
And we also have a few items on today's full council agenda.
We'll have three appointments to the Labor Standards Advisory Commission's Will Pitts, who will be representing Teamsters 117, Gay Gilmore, who is the co-founder of Optimism Brewery, on Capitol Hill.
And we have Marilyn Watkins, who is the policy director at the Economic Opportunity Institute, all three of which I've had the honor of working with over the last decade or so on labor standards policies.
Gay more recently met and was very inspired by all of the work she does to ensure that her workers earn a living wage starting at $20 an hour with 100% paid medical and dental vision.
This is the body, as you all remember, that comes together to come up with recommendations for City Council's consideration, the most recent of which is misclassification, thanks to Councilmember Herbold, who asked them to put that on their work plan.
So very excited to see these three move forward with your support.
I also want to let folks know we are circulating an updated resume for Dr. Khan this afternoon.
Dr. Khan is the person who our committee has advanced to be the director of the employee ombuds.
She has global diversity and inclusion specialist in her resume.
She served as the Director of Equity and Inclusive Practices at the Renton School District and prior to that was the Associate Director for Global Diversity Initiatives at Oregon State University.
We're really excited, especially because of the inclusion of the silence breakers and the change team makers and PT, sorry, Protech 17 members who were part of the evaluation.
And we want to make sure that her resume reflects her most recent activities, so we're circulating that for your consideration.
The next Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will be on May 16th at 930. Capital Hill Improvement Program appointees, Housing Levy Oversight Committee appointees, Fort Lawton Plan and Land Use, and Administration and Finance Plan.
and housing funding policies will all be on the agenda.
That is it for the upcoming agenda.
I do want to let folks know we have a special sort of work session that we are hosting jointly with the University of Washington and UAW 4121 that will be on confronting harassment and discrimination best practices, especially in public sector work.
We are going to be talking about how we elevate the voices of those who have been within the Me Too movement, talking about how we change policies and practices and how we bring those voices into collective bargaining and public policymaking.
If you are interested in coming, it will be at the University of Washington, University Friends Meeting Place at 4001 9th Avenue from 530 to 7. It's on our Facebook and social media.
And if you plan to attend, let our office know by the end of the day, given that this is not a special meeting, we want to make sure that we don't go over quorum.
I'm really excited today.
I'll be attending the housing cycling can how cycling can save the world Event at Discovery Center in South Lake Union in Westlake tomorrow I'll be speaking at the Cascade Bicycle Club breakfast and Wednesday again encourage folks to join the anti-harassment work session at 530 Thanks.
Thank you.
Councilmember skater.
Yes, sir.
Herbold
Thank you.
And I want to thank you for, Council Member Mosqueda, for convening the group of folks to talk about how to elevate voices to address issues related to sexual harassment in the workplace as it relates to our bargaining.
A lot of folks that I've been meeting with have been raising those issues, specifically the silence breakers, and I've been pointing them towards the bargaining process to address some of them.
getting down into some of the details about how they can do that is going to be really helpful.
Appreciate it.
have no items on today's full council agenda.
There is no Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee meeting this week.
One item that is not up for vote but is on the information referral calendar today, I just want to give people an early heads up, is an ordinance related to the Pike Place Market Historic District amending Ordinance 125. to extend its effective date by six months.
There will be a public hearing in my committee on June 4th in the evening at 5.30 p.m.
Other items coming up, I have a regional watershed resource inventory area, otherwise known as WIRA 9 committee meeting this week.
and items where I will be out in the community include Tuesday's reading partners luncheon, Wednesday's climate solutions breakfast, and on Saturday, there will be a city's climate summit to model for success out in Bellevue during the afternoon that I'll be attending.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, good morning.
I'm gonna try to keep this short, because you guys are gonna be hearing a lot from me during the week.
So nothing on this afternoon's agenda.
We do have a regularly scheduled meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee that will occur on May 8th.
That's this Wednesday.
Because we unfortunately are in a situation where there are things that need to be heard on, We will begin the committee meeting at 9 a.m.
instead of 930 a.m.
This Wednesday's agenda include hearing a briefing from the Seattle Police Department, representatives of the Seattle Public Utilities Department, the Seattle Department of Transportation, Department of Neighborhoods as well will be at the table with us to talk to us about the recently announced emphasis patrol strategy by the Seattle Police Department and Mayor Durkin.
As you all may be aware, I've been sending you copies of correspondence that I've been having with the chief of police and Mayor Durkan about their neighborhood emphasis strategy as announced last Tuesday, I believe, or Wednesday.
I'm losing track of the days at this point.
But essentially this is a announcement that came to us on the eve of when the announcement became public announcing that there would be seven neighborhoods who would receive additional police resources and would also see some cleanup work being done in their neighborhoods.
The lead agency for this effort is the Seattle Police Department and so they will be joining us at committee on Wednesday at 9 a.m.
to provide us an opportunity to hear from them how the strategy was developed and what we can expect from this deployment of the emphasis patrols.
You will notice that I, in the letter that I sent to the police department and the mayor, I included about a page and a half worth of questions related to both the development of the program, performance metrics, outcomes anticipated as a result of this additional strategy, and other questions related to racial equity toolkit and what crimes are going to be focused on during the deployment of these additional police resources.
really encourage all of you who have an interest in this subject to join us at the table on Wednesday and looking forward to that.
I have made a specific request to have Chief Carmen Best join us at the table.
I think that this is an issue that is of tantamount importance to both the council and to the overall city.
I'm still had a conversation with her as early as this morning.
She had indicated last week, her office had indicated last week that she would not be able to attend due to a conflict.
It does appear that she is in town and I've asked her to respectfully reconsider her schedule for the morning of Wednesday, May 8th to join us at the table.
I would sincerely appreciate my request being accommodated and my hope is that she will And I'm sure she'll revisit her schedule and look seriously at joining us at the table on this Wednesday.
Okay.
So that is that item.
Happy to answer any questions if folks have it.
But otherwise, I'll look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday to those who are interested in doing so.
The next item that we will consider in my committee will be related The mobile integrated health pilot program, this is a Seattle fire department program that all of us supported during the budget last process.
This is essentially what we colloquially have been referring to as a low acuity program.
This is the program that would save us a whole lot of taxpayer dollars by not sending out a full deployment of Seattle fire department trucks to what simply requires an EMT or some other crisis intervention management at repeat addresses in particular.
So really excited about hearing from the fire department and committee to address, to hear their response to our statement of legislative intent with the initial concept around what the pilot should look like based on their study and evaluation and also consider a lift of the proviso to allow them to deploy the funds to be able to purchase the So, I am looking at making some amendments to the slide and look forward to having a discussion about those at the table.
So, the last two items are related.
I'm excited to host the Washington State Employment Security Department, Carla Reyes, and my committee to walk us through an overview of how Washington's brand-new paid family and medical leave program will be implemented across the state beginning in 2020 so many workers starting in January 1st of 2019 should have started noticing a deduction in their paychecks going towards paid family and medical leave this is a effort that I was very closely involved with in the 2017 legislative a session that I was really excited passed and we will hear from the state of Washington how the implementation is going and very excited about having that conversation in my committee.
That is related to our last agenda item which Council Member Mosqueda already spoke to about very thoroughly in her comments about this afternoon's proclamation, but that is a fix to the City of Seattle's paid family care leave program.
When we originally, when a prior version of this council passed paid family leave here in the City of Seattle that applies to just our municipal employees, we passed that law in 2016. I was proud to be the prime sponsor of that that piece of legislation and was really honored to have a unanimous support of the city council as we considered that legislation and passed it.
There was unfortunately a blind spot in that law that didn't take into account what would happen if a city employee in the course of supposedly, of being in a situation of celebrating one of the most joyous occasions of receiving a new child into their home, what would happen in terms of their leave benefits if that child of whatever age passed away shortly after being welcomed into the home.
So this law acknowledges that there is a gap in our leave benefits under the paid family and medical leave care program at the city of Seattle and will address that gap so that future employees will have access to paid family and medical leave, even in the instance where I'm really excited about hearing this in my committee and advancing it for full council's consideration.
We're hoping to be able to vote this out of committee on Wednesday and have full council consider it the following Monday.
So that is all.
Great questions and issues that I think will affect the whole city So I think doing a deeper dive on what's happening is makes a lot of sense.
So thanks for organizing that Councilmember chica, but you cool Happens all the time Good morning, everyone.
Just there's one a plus item on the introduction and referral this morning Council Bill 119511, which amends a contract rezone of 7809 Greenwood Avenue North, D6, that the council approved last year to make corrections required by the superior court remand.
This legislation will be referred to next week's full city council meeting because the associated clerk file 314425 was previously granted by the Pledge Committee in April.
This item is being considered under the council's quasi-judicial rules.
Council members should avoid communications about the merits of the rezone applications with proponents or opponents of the project.
and if you have any questions about the council's quasi-judicial rules, please see Kito Freeman of our central staff.
There will be no PLEZ-related items on the full council agenda today.
And as a reminder, the next PLEZ committee meeting is next Wednesday, May 15th.
Thank you.
Very good.
Thank you very much.
Council Member O'Brien.
Thank you, Council President.
Nothing on this afternoon's agenda from the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.
We have a committee meeting tomorrow afternoon here in Chambers at 2 o'clock.
Quick run through of the items on there.
We'll be taking appointments.
for the Freight Advisory Board.
There'll be six of those, two for the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee.
We will also get a report back from SDOT on the Move Seattle Oversight Report.
Additionally, we will get a SLY Response Report on the Rapid Ride Corridors.
This is something that came up during budget.
As you may recall, in the budget process, or shortly in advance of the budget process, there was the reset to the the Levy to Move Seattle initiative.
And there are some questions about how that's going to play out for the rapid ride corridors.
Those are also tied up with federal funding grants that they're waiting on, and so this is an update to hear kind of the evolved thinking on that.
We will have the RSGI report from the Office of Sustainability and Environment tomorrow afternoon.
And finally, we'll be having our first discussion about ADU legislation.
We actually will not have the legislation in front of us yet.
We still are probably a week or two away from hearing back from the hearing examiner.
But we expect to hear from the hearing examiner sometime middle of this month.
The focus of the conversation tomorrow is largely going to be around the proposed FAR limits in single family zones.
This, let me just say the legislation around backyard cottages and in-law units has been something we've been discussing for over three years now.
And there's a lot of folks that have paid a lot of attention to this.
And so we will touch on just some of the highlights of that, but we'll get into the details of that later on.
In the environmental impact statement, which was finalized and had a preferred alternative last fall, it included a recommendation that we limit the floor area ratio, essentially the size of single family homes in the single family zone.
And that is a relatively new concept.
It hasn't had the three years of vetting and conversation.
For people that may never consider to build a backyard cottage or an in-law unit, but own a single family home, it may have impacts on them, and they may not have been paying attention to this legislation.
And so it's really important that we have a chance to daylight early what the proposal would look like, some of the consequences it may have, some of the kind of tweaks we might be, or exceptions we might be making to that rule.
Allie will be here at the committee on Tuesday to walk through all that and hopefully get a chance to hear some of your thoughts and feedback on that or answer some of the questions.
And also really want to make sure that the public out there understands what the proposal is and how it might impact folks that own homes.
We will proceed on with ADU legislation later in the month.
We will dig more into the specifics around parking requirements, ownership, owner occupancy requirements, size limits, heights, all those types of things.
We'll also be noticing an evening public hearing here in Chambers on June 11th to walk through that legislation.
And then we'll have additional committee meetings.
So one on May 28th, the end of this month, and then another one after the public hearing on June 18th.
And if all goes according to plan, we will have worked through all the issues and have the vote and figure out how that goes forward.
And if not, we'll give ourselves a little more time.
This is all contingent, of course, upon a favorable ruling from the hearing examiner.
With the exception of tomorrow's committee meeting, I don't expect to hear anything before that.
So we will start discussing FAR in advance of that hearing examiner ruling just to get that out there in the public once again.
Very good.
Thanks for the update.
And we'll try to be very intentional about it because of the significance of those issues, all the issues you described, scheduling issues, let people know exactly what's on the agenda.
We'll do a little overkill.
Did you mention a letter that you were interested in having?
I was about to mention that, Council President Harrell.
Thank you.
So circulated via email to you all a letter for Thank you sir.
We're going to send to Pete Holmes, been working with some advocates and with the city attorney's office on this.
Council President, if it's okay, because I think a couple offices still want a chance to review it, I'll bring it to full council this afternoon.
That's good.
This is in regards to potential legal suits against fossil fuel companies.
So other jurisdictions, including New York, King County, I believe Los Angeles, have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies for the impacts on climate change that they've made.
And my understanding is City Attorney Pete Holmes has been working on a strategy around that.
This letter says we're very supportive of the strategy, encourages him to hire outside counsel on a contingent fee basis so that we're not, the outside firm would recover only in the case of a successful lawsuit and recovery from the fossil fuel company.
Will you be talking more about that this afternoon, or do we have time?
Because I'm very interested to hear what King County's doing in particular.
So if...
So I am not...
I'm prepared to talk about it, but I'm not prepared to answer specific questions about King County, so why don't I find some more information on that, and maybe if you want to give me the questions, then we can air that this afternoon.
I think we have a relatively short agenda, so I won't take up too much time this afternoon, but I'm happy to try to address some questions about that.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Very good.
Okay, thanks team and at this point we'll as presiding officer I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council now convene an executive session the purpose of the executive sessions is to discuss Pending potential or actual litigation and this gives us an opportunity opportunity to discuss confidential legal matters With city attorneys as authorized by law and illegal monitors from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure that we reserve our questions of public policy for our public open sessions.
I expect this session to last for 30 minutes, and so it'll go till 1034. And if it goes beyond that time, I'll announce the extension and its expected duration.
With that, let's move into executive session.